With many people forced to live on just a few pounds a week due to benefit sanctions, the bedroom tax and other savage cuts, Oliver has decided to launch a new television series lecturing us on how we can eat cheaply for no money.

If this week’s comments, first published in the Radio Times, are anything to go by, then it looks set to be yet another Channel 4 poor-bashing diatribe with the usual exploitative footage of single mums and pensioners crying whilst smug twats like Oliver deliver sermons about how their poverty is their own fault.

His ludicrous comments about the lavish diets of Sicilian street cleaners gives a taste of what to expect . In Jamie Oliver’s pampered mind it appears he thinks everyone has a farmer’s market just down the road. No-one has mobility problems, and so can easily drag home bags of shopping, even if the plebs don’t have a car. The electricity and gas required to slow cook cheap cuts of meat never runs out. Hard pressed single parents can simply pop out to browse the artisan stalls outside the local Poundstretcher, whilst pensioners should just pick up some cherry tomatoes and fresh fucking mussels at the off licence on the way home from the Bingo.

Just add a dash of olive oil, a sprig of fresh basil from the garden and a splash of red wine from the cellar and stir up on the Aga for a cheap and refreshing treat that at current prices would cost more than many people’s food budget for a weekend. This prick knows nothing of the lives of millions of people in this country who face desperate poverty.

If Oliver had actually set foot anywhere but Waitrose (except to get paid) in the last 20 years, he might have seen how ‘value food’ – cheap shit with a poor nutritional value – dominates the shopping trollies in the poorest areas. He might even notice that in areas where there are cheap take-aways, a bucket of chicken and chips will feed a small family for the price of one of his ready meals. Perhaps he would even have taken some responsibility for his role in promoting the supermarket dominance which has forced millions of people to buy over-priced and unhealthy food because as anyone poor knows, it is usually the cheapest option. And in areas where supermarkets have closed the local shops and markets down, it is increasing the only option.

Oliver claims he finds it “quite hard to talk about modern-day poverty” because some people have televisions. This has become an increasingly ludicrous slur which suggests that anyone with a wide screen television can’t be properly poor, like proper poor people in poor places. Oliver seems to think that if someone turned up in the slums of Mumbai with a wide screen telly the locals would immediately gasp and falls to their knees in reverence at such a vast display of wealth. In fact they’d probably barely look up from watching X Factor.

The world is littered with discarded electrical goods. Toasters in Tesco are nearly as cheap as the toast. You can sometimes find a large screen telly in the street. If not it may have been bought as a gift, or on credit, or before poverty took hold. You can’t however, eat a fucking television.

The rich have always condescended to the poor about their lifestyles and pretended there is some escape from the grinding suffering of destitution. Whether it’s Iain Duncan Smith claiming workfare and benefit cuts are the best route out of poverty or overpaid celebrities like Oliver saying we should all be happy living on stale bread and rat stew, it is an all too familiar tactic. Traditionally violent revolution has been considered one of the best ways out of poverty. Jamie Oliver should consider that before he delivers his next Marie Antoinette routine. Let him eat lead.

902 responses to “Has There Ever Been A Bigger Prick Than Jamie Fucking Oliver?”

That is the saddest article I have ever read, and not just because of how vile it is. How can I possibly commend this? Jamie Oliver is trying to open peoples minds and help folk be money wiser and healthier. How can someone logically think he is attacking the poor by simlpy giving recipe advice? let’s say you do absolutely believe he is taunting you via some warped logic, how about constructive feedback if you really think he got it wrong instead of this cat calling, immature rubbish. I mean for all the killers and dictators existing in the world, Jamie Oliver is the “biggest prick?”. Come on!?! To the writer of this piece get out of your hovel and take a look around at the world. What are you actually complaining about? It looks like a tantrum on paper, like the writer has never stopped shouting “I don’t want yucky vegetables on my dinner plate!”, like an over grown toddler. It’s a closed minded person forced to look at a new way of thinking, i.e. Jamie Oliver’s way of thinking and it’s blowing his mind. And that is what’s sad. Is the nation really full of these folk stuck in the stone age? Unable to debate, or reason without throwing a fit and completely abusing the opposition?

ann-marie..
much research has been done on food poverty and food deserts, access, availability, and affordability of food in the uk,,+ savage benefit cuts, downward pressure on wages, closing of markets, blighted shopping centres, out of town supermarkets, etc, etc,
why don’t you try reading some?

Anne Marie is spot on the writer of this article has no idea of poverty. The poor in this country are in general NOT truly poor. They have the comfort blanket that is the benefits system that the majority of the real poor in the world do not have. Many will buy expensive ready made meals waste the rest on alcohol play playstation the working week and claim the are poor and hard done by.
7.50 pounds can buy you a bag of mussels and all the ingredients you need to eat as our friend says above for a couple of days yet at the same time I can see this writer opting for a ready made indian meal at the same price and complaining he his poor so can’t eat any better. Short sighted ignorant tit. Who’s fed up of reverse snobbery British people constantly claiming they are poor and envying people with money who have succeeded when they have no idea of what poverty really is. And no I am not rich and yes I have witnessed ‘real poverty’. While I am at it gets my goat this referring to people with money as very middle class as if those saying it were so very lower class. Reality check it numbnuts.

this bloke is nothing more than a big-tounged, floppy headed piece of utter ass-gravy, he’s failed most things in his life and now he’s added this load of crap, which will also turn out to be a failure.
why doesn’t he just rid us ofhis pointless waste of oxygen existence!.

Anyone who has the money to live anyone on earth and voluntarily chooses Saffron Walden is automatically an arse. When I lived there as a child it was because I didn’t have a choice. Luckily my parents managed to escape us to Cambridge when I was 14.
.

Arrogance and ignorance seems to be prevalent within the middle and upper classes as you have highlighted beautifully here jv.
It is also prevalent in some bloggers (excluding yours because you will fight back and not censor any criticism), the know it all ones that do censor and should also have the title pricks or dicks as far as I’m concerned.

Perhaps Mr Oliver should stop for a moment and think.. After all where would he be if the poor didn’t have TV’s, 70% of the country cannot afford to eat at one of his eateries so I would think the bulk of his not inconsiderable wealth comes from that 70% watching his crummy spit ridden shows and adverts.

I have to rent my TV, I cannot buy a new one, I get a very good deal on it and most of all I don’t have to worry about it dying. it is therefore a flat screen, I also have a sky dish.. HOWEVER as I don’t have a subscription for sky and use the dish as nothing more than an antennae to receive the free channels. Oliver would do well to remember that not everything in life is as it seems.

He totally lost his argument with the comments about TV’s and mussels. He is right it is far better to cook from fresh, you don’t need fresh herbs and can always modify. I buy all Sainsbury’s own brands it’s what you do with them that makes a difference. he could have had a brilliant message but sadly all he has done is spout the same old crap that the Daily Hail and its acolytes will lap up.

Eggs-actly. He seems to have conveniently forgotten that he came to public attention when (too many) people fell for/put up with his Essex boy-of-the-people routine – on TV. His slight speech impediment (usp) saved him the bother of having a personality. He could talk straight to camera in a way not dissimilar to the way that Floyd [tried to] – only less intelligibly (in Jamie’s case). He looked sort of ‘appealing’ in the way an Andrex puppy would and was ‘novel’ (@early 90s) for being young, male and able to talk to his camera(woman), smile and make salad – all while not falling over.

Stopping and thinking might not be going to happen any time soon – he’s made what there is of his (political) mind up already regarding the connections/moral relativity of TV watching to food poverty. He is perhaps a few knives and forks short of having a full canteen of cutlery in this respect, despite having ‘great business acumen’/trying anything/everything someone guesses might sell:- cookery books aimed at ‘lads’ who’ve never cooked (lad’s food/food for lads), tried being altruistic in his series ‘helping’ previously ‘hard-to-help kids’ (then not being able to cope when one of them had enough of him/the programme maker’s rules and threatened to leave/pull out of filming). Not like guess who, who has pulled himself up by his bootstraps, worked in (the family) pub from a young age/never quit/knows the value of hard work/trying hard. Has become holier-than-thou along the way. The school dinners campaign was meant to give him a different kind of profile and more ‘gravitas’ (it didn’t really work though) – apart from incessantly advertising a well-known supermarket (on TV). He now seems certain that the poor aren’t helping themselves by not trying hard enough/not buying his books/learning from his programmes and are being wilfully ignorant/watching too much (non-cookery-related) tv and not buying Sicilian lemons and curly kale.

(Doesn’t have any issues with dishes though – they can be useful for holding lemons/doubling up as “fingerbowls”).

Agreed, ladyfreebird750. In fact, while I did purchase a new TV (to replace my 11-year-old Beko), it’s only 18″, and I’ve put the aerial lead into storage to save money on the TV tax. Instead, I have a second-hand DVD player and just buy second-hand DVDs from the local market to provide all the entertainment I need.

The comment about the huge TV was absolutely in context and makes perfect sense. He isn’t just sitting on his high horse saying, oh you peasants could eat healthier, he HELPS people by showing them how it is possible.

95% of the time people use money as an excuse to eat badly. Really it is laziness. You cannot sit there and tell me buying a frozen pizza and chips is cheaper than some rice, fish/pulses and vegetables. BULLSHIT.

Also what the do disabled people have to do with it? Are people not allowed to eat potatoes now because they are too heavy for people with mobility problems to carry home? Fuck off mate.

Instead of attacking someone that is actually trying to help people, how about you read about his charities and his apprentice program, then tell me how he is ‘a poisonous little runt’.

Dan you clearly have no experience of living with a disability which is of course not your fault at all – however, dragging a bag of potatoes home from the shop would be impossible for me – I would be dragging myself along the road just to get home, even without the potatoes! The point is, when you are disabled or have mobility problems as Jonny mentions, reliance on (often unhealthier) ready meals becomes an everyday reality as you simply cannot get up and down from bed or chair etc to cook a meal from scratch – ready meals or cheap takeaway options are usually full of fats and sugars and usually cheaper overall than buying fresh meat and veg to make a meal which a disabled person may not even be able to a) fetch from the shops for themselves OR to stand/sit to cook and prepare. Just saying.

That’s funny, the one about the bag of potatoes, I had heart attack carrying a bag of spuds in 2009 but it did weigh 12 Kg and now I have a blood ejection fraction of 6% – in healthy person it is 60% to 70%

I don’t go to the chippy – but someone who is disabled might send their carer/older child to the local takeaway. And there is difference between sending a child to “buy a portion of chips” and sending them into the local supermarket with a full blown shopping list. It can’t be done. That’s all I’m saying. Disabled people have to make all sorts of compromises in order to exist and they have lots of different ways of coping -microwave ovens and tasteless ready meals are the only means of survival for many disabled people. It’s very sad. When you are telling people to learn to cook and live cheaply, you are describing a utopian world that began to die off with the advent of the microwave oven, ready meals and women going out to work rather than staying home and learning to feed their fellas their evening meals. Time won’t go backwards. I agree that in general lifestyles need to change (evolve…again), but demonising people because of lack of knowledge, financial ability or physical restriction is frankly unacceptable. That’s why I take exception to Mr Oliver and his prejudices.

I agree with you Dan, I think that this article is full of a lot more spite than Jamie Oliver. It is a complete misrepresentation of what Jamie Oliver is actually trying to achieve. I often watch his cookery programs and don’t find them elitist or condescending in any way. If people have mobility problems surely they could order groceries to be delivered to their door over the internet. I find that unhealthy eating is something which occurs over time not instantly. Many takeaway meals aren’t good value for money in fact they are quite expensive when you think about it. Basic carbohydrates like pasta, rice and wheat are quite cheap to buy and last for a long time. I understand why people with disablities may not be able to cook but this shouldn’t become a complete deterrent from eating healthily as salads, seeds and nuts, fresh smoked salmon and fruit don’t require cooking and are pretty much instant healthy snacks. Living on a budget myself I try to eat healthily by buying value fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds and I find that my expenses are not as high as they would be for ready meals.

Before you comment about how people with disabilities and/or illness should get their food delivered go and check how much it costs to do that. All the people you are being so offensive towards know that it would be wonderful to have their shopping brought to them, but they do not have the money to pay a delivery charge on top of the cost of the food. Before you comment engage brain. You may be living in lala land but, unfortunately for thousands, that is a luxury they cannot afford and to SURVIVE they have to remain firmly in touch with a very unpleasant reality.

I actually find it is cheaper to get your shopping delivered than spending the time and money getting to the store. You can also have an extra look over the shopping basket, and depending on how big your shop is it’s generally £4 or free, which you generally save on multibuys and sale offers (although obviously there is a big discussion about why the food is overpriced enough for them to do the offers..)
Eating fresh also saves in the long run for health costs as well..

I’m sorry you don’t have any experience of living with a disability, which, for me, means that I can’t walk to my local shops, stand and cook a meal or handle hot pans.

I certainly means that I don’t have the money for fresh bloody smoked salmon.

Trying to eat healthily is great, but it’s not easy. It’s made even more difficult by people who have no idea what your situation is like, telling you that they could do it much better, if they were you.

This is just absolute spin. I don’t know why the disable thing is even being discussed, it was brought up in this article arbitrarily to create hate towards Jamie. Jamie mentioned nothing about disabled people.

Are you going to spread hate to keyboard manufacturers because they don’t cater towards people with no arms? This is a waste of energy.

Thank you Jonathan and Dan, some sense pitted against the .
intellectual poverty and handicap of reason demonstrated in most of these comments. Over here, we grow our own fruit & veg in our garden. We subsidise our dry foods, like pulses, legumes, grains etc by buying in bulk with the food coop. There’s absolutely no reason for an able bodied person to play the victim’s card.

Hate when middle class people like you try and tell us normal, working-class people what we can and cant do. You have no idea. You dont know what we live on, how we live our lives, so stop acting like you do. Fool.

If they can cook ready meals in a microwave then they can cook fresh meals the same way as there is nothing you can’t cook in a microwave. You can even cook cakes today in a mug in the microwave only takes 2 mins. And what about scrambled eggs that’s got to be more healthy than a ready meal

That’s nonsense. I can go to the chippy, reach out once to hand over my money and once again to collect my chips, go home and eat them. I can probably manage this most days as it’s close to my house.

I can’t chop a handful of anything. I can’t stir food. I am now no longer able to cook at all compared to the one meal a week I used to manage. On a bad day I can’t get food into my mouth without exacerbating my dexterity condition. I’m trying treatment for this but it’s slow going and my medics are rightly cautious…

Please don’t make assumptions about what disabled people can and cannot do. Our impairments differ and what looks easy can be hard and what looks hard may be for us easier than other options. The only people qualified to judge what individuals can/cannot do are qualified medical professionals carrying out a sensible assessment + history and ourselves.

Imagine this, I am 60 – look quite normal too, look very healthy in fact but this is misleading. My heart has a blood ejection fraction of 6%, in a normal healthy individual this ejection fraction is between 60% and 70%. The heart doesn’t beat as such, it is more of a shuffle (There is very little wattage if electricity is to be understood.) Say for example 70% ejection fraction of blood is equivalent to 100 watt light bulb. My guess is 6% ejection fraction is equivalent to about 9 watt light bulb though I think such does not exist. I wander about but consciousness is a problem, I enjoy walking in a swimming pool and it is my only means of fun, self entertainment.

Ever tried walking in water, it is harder than swimming but I don’t swim because I have a very small left shoulder. I know it is only medication that keeps me alive after surgery on an oversized heart to cut it smaller along with triple bypass and mitral valve repair. I have what is know as a BNP (and not nationalist party) of 1200 whereby if this factor was 5000 I would immediately be in need of a heart transplant. This good news was given to me by a professor of Cardiology because 3 years ago I was told I needed a heart transplant.

I should have cut to the quick and said simply I despise capitalism and the way it leaves the poorer elements of uk society. UK society is a victim of its own success with its welfare state because believe me in some hospitals they really are keeping the dead alive whereas in other countries this is not possible.

As for this Oliver guy and his ilk they should their mouths completely, leave the disabled and poor alone and enjoy their apparent misplaced success. they are in fact perverted sorts trying to display themselves as the equivalents of a mother theresa!

Yeah I know, problem in uk is welfare system including nhs. Not such a problem really personally as they keep bringing the likes of me back from the dead which tends to keep my family happy but I am tired of being tired all the time. Because of welfare state and democracy I am allowed to be as sick / ill as I am knowing I will find repair even if unconscious and not aware that I am being repaired!

I would say I am a Jamie Oliver target even though specific mention of sick and disabled is not made by him. Do such as he think we laugh in the face of everything as recipients of welfare benefits.? They just simply understand nothing more than their own ego as they search continually for ways to massage that ego further.

It also needs pointing out to such as he that he too was a recipient of welfare benefits through child benefit paid to his mother but he and his ilk do not have the intellectual capacity to acknowledge this. All with complaints about welfare benefits should return every last penny they benefitted from child benefit to the state to make their attitude hold water.

Neither Oliver nor others like him really understand that the alternative to their opposition of “feckless sorts” is communism then where will they be? It is like they think they know what needs to be done to sort out the problem but just cannot come out with the words, “Socialism / Communism is the answer” – They are blind to the reality of all things, their world is one of image, nothing more, How Shallow?

Furthermore even the Royal Family receive subsidies akin to welfare benefits from the European Union Agricultural fund for their farming projects, not much but receive money they do. How corrupt!

Mick, I entirely agree with your comments. You’ve put your finger on exactly why this is so distasteful and causing feelings of outrage – as with the TV programmes depicting ‘scroungers’ with ‘saints’ explaining to them how they ‘should/could’ do so much better. (Or when Tory MPs have tried to hammer home that living on benefits is perfectly feasible proposition (even before the current cuts to actual amounts) in a TV experiment lasting a week or so).

Jamie also lives in TV-land (& owns property/businesses & it’s fairly clear he has no concept of how ‘the other half’ – to use a cliche – live, if he ever did) – I didn’t know anything about his political leanings/world view before now (or care) but it wouldn’t be too difficult to guess from comments he’s made in the past on his various attempts at social documentary/comment. It’s seems unlikely that he knows about the history of child benefit (family allowance previously) and the origins/ins & outs of the welfare state. I would be surprised.

For him (& his team) this is only about finding another ‘angle’ (that can be construed as ‘food-related’). They’ve done most of the ‘groups’/regions they can think of almost to death: Italy – he’s been there – lots; The USA – done it. Young people who’ve never cooked before – JO ‘wrote’ a book for them; Fast meals for people who are busy and don’t have time to spend more than 15 mins a day making the tea. Etc. Etc. (maybe someone else has kept up).

The school dinners campaign was – mainly – always going to be a vote-winner & happily involved him in talking to/’liaising’ with some high profile political types – which will might have been hoped to have done him no end of good gravitas-wise. (Huge Fearnly has done a similar thing – ‘Hugh’s Fish Fight’ – involving himself with an ‘issue’ but the difference is that he appears to be GENUINE – or way more so – in his concern about over-fishing etc. – and he was able to make his own argument – cogently, without (I think) offending vast swathes of the population.

JO, meanwhile, did something based on ‘showing misguided or direction-less young people how to discover a passion for food/hard work by giving them a start working in his businesses (for TV). Again, this sounds ok ‘on paper’ & maybe he really did believe in this, who knows? But he isn’t really a ‘people person’ in the true sense of the word – he is, as someone else has already said, a businessman. So now what’s left for JO? – oh, look – ‘The Poor [and feckless]’. Currently ‘The no.1 hot topic’ (with lots in the media already and at least some in the country believe it’s all about ‘the wrong choices/lifestyle’ – what could be better? It ties in, conveniently, with food so it would almost be wrong NOT to do it in programme/new series form …

The problem with this category or group of people, though, is that ‘The Poor [& feckless]’ aren’t really a homogenised (or even a pasteurised) group – despite facing a single uniting difficulty – but not one that JO and his travelling circus can solve with recipes/homilies – of any kind.

Trying to get political won’t really work for him & he will continue to put his foot in his mouth – so to speak. There seems to be a feeling that he’s becoming rather less telegenic (it will happen to the best of us) – & so he has to consider his ‘role’ – but this really, really isn’t it. He’s bound to encounter a refusal to be preached to by those he’s trying to ‘help’ as long as his remarks continue to be published/’interpreted’ and are in this vein. No-one wants someone who knows nothing of the reality of their situation to march in and claim to know a way to ‘fix’ them – when they’re living day-to-day with the conundrum they face and are only too well aware of the various challenges that might be ‘preventing’ them getting to where they want to be in life (in this cases, there’s by & large just the one very big issue – our government of the day & those that have preceded it).

I think that’s why I’ve suddenly had about enough – he can write books about Italian food to his heart’s content – but it’s when he tries to do social commentary about the ills of society & strays into areas which (lets face it) don’t get much more personal than not having enough to eat – finding it difficult to shop/put meals on the table all of the days in a month/being eligible for free school meals etc – when there is every possibility that school meals (free) might not continue to exist not too much further down the road … (Does Jamie know, I wonder that the school clothing ‘allowance’ – such as it was – which provided some small amount of financial support towards the expense of school uniforms – has now been scrapped (or reformed) at local authorities’ discretion – and replaced instead with a council tax bill and potentially also a bedroom tax bill for those with the least to live on)? If he does know, what would all this mean to him? How can he help?

A portion of fish and chips weighs far less than a bag of spuds, mate. I’ve been lectured at before for having little food in the house, but simple fact is I can’t carry more than 2 fairly light bags. A bag of potatoes (to stick to this “satirical example”) would be totally out, which is why canned potatoes are a godsend (and undoubtedly seen as “rubbish food”).

Oliver’s mind is awash with prejudices and ignorance.
Studies show that the poorer you are the more your choice of food is limited, due to geography, lack of transport and the cost of the food.

A large TV works out as a very cheap way of being entertained when you can’t afford to go out. And as others have pointed out, it could be second hand or acquired before becoming quite so poor.
People are moving on and off employment all the time, or from one job to another.The unemployment figure looks static but it isn’t the same lot of people on there all the time ; there’s a constant churn.

“95% of people use money as an excuse…” you say.
Are you inspired by Grant Shapps or Iain Duncan Shit? They like to make up statistics as well.

If you have a look through Dan’s recent web-design clients, you’ll find that the top one is………Ta-Da! The Jamie Oliver Foundation. I’ll let you make of that what you will, because I don’t want to get sued by anyone’s rich daddy for accusing them of nepotism.

I totally agree, Dan.
Food delivery costs £2.50 from asda, cheaper than the bus fare it costs me to get to my nearest supermarket. This is what DLA is designed to cover.

I am bringing up my family on a very tight budget, and, aside from people who are physically unable to cook, I see no reason why people find it more expensive to cook from scratch.

Yes, a bucket of chicken might be cheap, but a whole chicken can be bought for £3.33 in most supermarkets, and fruit and veg are often reduced or free. (At the moment I have my eyes on the plum tree down the road, an apple tree in a neighbours garden (free cider) and an abundance of blackberries on a local industrial estate (wine for Xmas 2014).

I have a small balcony, and grow potatoes in an old bin and herbs on my windowsill. The seed potatoes were from pound land so it’s really very affordable.

A fresh chicken can be easily spatchcocked to reduce cooking time and save fuel, and coleslaw is really cheap and healthy to make- half a white cabbage, carrot and onion, add some herbs, some cheap mayo and some low fat value yoghurt.
Roast chicken one day, then chicken salad, or coronation chicken, and then make stock to freeze or soup for day 3.

Not lecturing, just saying.

I don’t see Jamie Oliver as a runt, and I have no vested interest, but we have to eat cheaply to afford housing costs.

Cheap burgers are not cheap compared to a can of chick peas, which, with a bit of prep, makes a healthy, cheap and tasty alternative to pink slime burgers.

And no, I don’t have a big telly. I have a 20 year old box someone gave me, and a freeview box from cash converters.

Oh no, here we go again. You are missing the point because you do’t want to get it. This is incredibly patronising. I’ve not had any difficulties with thinking of delicious and nutritious meals to feed myself (& my family) – even during a period of unemployment in the past, as the sole breadwinner in the household – until 2012/13’s assaults on the benefit system – & anyone trying to live within it – made this nigh-on impossible.

What’s needed isn’t recipes and suggestions of where to buy cheap/good quality food – people on here are out foraging for nettles and in bins already – what more do you want? This government (& successive previous governments) has to be exposed for everything it’s done/continues to do to it’s most vulnerable – and made to recompense people – properly – whether they’re in or out of work, so that they can try to live with some level of dignity – and it isn’t going to happen by spatchcocking a chicken – whatever that might be !

I agree, spatchcocking a chicken won’t change the world, bit it does cut cooking times in half so may at least save some pennies.

As far as I could make out, the post IS about Jamie Oliver, and is an attack on him rather than the government.

I didn’t mean to sound patronising. I’m sorry you took my post as such.

And I don’t find it undignified to forage for seasonal wild produce. It’s actually very liberating to get something for nothing.

But each to their own, I suppose.

One more thing- you suggest I want people eating out of bins. Please enlighten me as to where your wildly speculative (and waaaay off the mark) assumption came from. I reread my post and I don’t think I advocated that at all…..

Maybe just have a read through my (& Dan’s) other comments & a re-read of Jamie’s comments – I read them in the Metro paper & was incensed before coming back home and reading this post/all the comments.

(“Patronising” was meant more generally than just your comment – but I do have a feeling that we’ve been here before & that in the end it just boiled down to “people can just save up” [in advance of Universal Credit] or go blackberrying – in response to an empty fridge/cupboards). Not everyone has equal access to nature’s larder – they might live in the inner city and never see more than a few shrivelled up, gas-covered specimens.

If I have mentioned ‘a dignified life’ in the same paragraph as ‘going through bins/foraging for food’ it’s to try to underline the point that both of these can be find depending on your standpoint (eg. my mum would have been fine with one & horrified if she ever had to do the other) – but people are being forced into doing these things because their subsistence allowance (benefit due to them for food & essentials to live) is being hacked into/removed on government say-so. It can’t be much clearer surely?

Wow! How sad that people are so quick to attack each other. What I understand is that Jamie Oliver is continuing to come up with solutions to help people but I guess from reading all of the angry comments, some people would rather he didn’t. I would have hoped that rather than criticizing suggestions and targeting each other (which is ironic since we don’t know each other) we could channel that passion and constructively discuss and perhaps come up with alternative solutions or just accept that people have choice and freewill so if someone wants to accept Jamie’s advice then they are free to do so and those that don’t, get the same respect. I felt that your comments made perfect sense, how the heck it ended up as an attack on you-I have no idea, but good on you for putting your thoughts out there, gave me the courage to say my piece too no matter how many angry replies I may receive.

The anger is about people in prominent positions – and in print – (including Jamie Oliver, sadly) propping up the government’s slurs on the poor by repeating stereotypes eg. “The poor can’t be that poor and are just bleating on for no good reason – look, they have consumer goods”. Also “They’re just uneducated and don’t know how to budget/shop.cook properly. We can help them with that.” These comments do not “make sense” – largely because they ignore what is happening to the unemployed, disabled and ill people of this country* (*see paragraph below this one) and place the blame for ‘not managing’ squarely on the people being penalised at every turn. This is now well-documented fact.

The anger is to do with benefit sanctions (forcing people to use food banks when they otherwise need to), freezing of benefit amounts at pre-1980 levels, making people pay council and bedroom tax out of the money that they’ve paid for via their national insurance in case they should ever become unemployed – money that’s supposed to be for FOOD and the essentials needed to live a half-way dignified life.

I don’t know whether you are really interested in those who might be in a less fortunate position than yourself, but if you genuinely are then please read as many of Johnny Void’s other posts as possible – and then see if you still feel the same way about the sainted Jamie Olive & his views on the poor vis-a-vis their telly-watching/eating habits.

He’s not just interested in money, he’s interested in all the good things it can buy (eating and drinking nice food, and socialising). He’s able to exercise choice every day as well as having a high degree of control over his life – but it hasn’t led him to develop any compassion for or understanding of his fellow human beings. Other than (nominally) for the nameless ‘picturesque poor people’ in far-distant shores.

*(& eating chips doesn’t make you a bad person – that’s more to do with the type of chip – oven, thick cut or crinkly).

THANK YOU DAN – someone who is using their brain. Johnny Void is merely looking for sensationalism. I understand some of his comments but isn’t he taking them out of context and being a little harsh? He is one angry man and just for the record I am one of the “poor”!! Thank you Jamie Oliver for trying to help those that don’t have much even at the risk of getting it wrong sometimes or even being misunderstood!!

Seconded – thank you Dan, I was hopeful to find this opinion represented somewhere in here. If you look deep into Jamie Oliver’s activism regarding healthy eating, it’s not hard to notice that his push is in trying to educate EVERYONE in how eating healthily = a healthy body. Rich or poor, everyone is capable of making poor decisions and healthy ones. If you disregard his opinion out of fear of being talked down to, you’re missing an opportunity to live longer and happier lives.

Having a disability does not limit your access to food – there are plenty of opportunities out there for supermarket delivery, family and friends helping out and even asking at supermarkets for help out to your vehicle. The human race is not by nature evil and inconsiderate, and all classes are capable of recognizing where they have power in their lives to make choices that benefit them. Everyone, REGARDLESS of circumstances, has options. If you struggle to get up and cook when you need food, other options include arranging trades with friends so they can cook for you, and you can trade them something in return (a service/advice/craft etc…), you can eat raw food (VERY good for you!), and it always helps to plan ahead so you’re never stuck without food and resort to a fast food option. Just a few ideas.

I eat organic meat/fish, a 75% plant-based diet, minimal processed sugar and lots of fruit for snacks and I spend HALF of what I used to before I was more conscious of my diet. It also does not take me long to prepare my food because simple combinations are just as nutritious.

It’s worth making the time in your life to eat well, after all, diet and exercise are the main contributing factors leading to ALL chronic diseases.

lucy..
no one is unaware of the value of a healthy diet, it is having reliable access to it is the problem, as a diabetic2, i am fully aware of diet..but money/access to resources is very tight and getting tighter..the waged scillian street cleaner has plenty of perks and access to good cheap food..but many have not, i have to prioritise spending out of my tiny budget…funny the more money one has the less impoverished one is, a magical fact, or is the cause of poverty having no money, i wonder….

Why don’t you assume that everyone has the same level understanding of nutrition and ability to plan/manage/economise as you do? I’m 55 most of my adult life I’ve been able to enjoy a very healthy and delicious Mediterranean diet. Just like most people I am good at managing my finances, planning meals and economising. Everyone is taught about nutrition at school. Following a sudden and extreme change, over which I had no control, and despite my perfectly normal ability to manage my life, I have, along with thousands of others, been reduced to such extremes of poverty that I had to resort to using a foodbank. Have you ever been that hungry? It’s excruciatingly painful. You and so many others need to accept that the problem is financial. I know you don’t want to believe it, but there really is a level of income below which it is impossible to maintain a healthy diet or any diet at all. Also serious disabilities and health problems exacerbate the practicalities of acquiring and cooking meals, adding to the cost by needing deliveries and assistance from a carer. It is not ignorance, lack of education or even, for most adults, a lack of experience. People are now scavenging for food by taking from bins, this is absolute necessity for an increasing number of people in the UK. As to eating a diet of beans, this would clearly not be healthy and would be very lacking in essential vitamins. The UN and Save the Children have expressed extreme concern at the levels of poverty in Britain. It’s real, it’s time to take action to put this right and it is completely inappropriate and offensive to lecture people in this appalling situation on what they should eat.

And I thought riding a bicycle 12 miles a day to and from work in 2002 was a healthy decision, how wrong I was – for this reason I don’t think any person driving a car is making a healthy choice. Don’t need to explain further what happened, it has to be obvious.

Totally agree with you. MY husband and I work full time, we have 2 teenagers. We have a small 22 inch tv. I buy value toilet rolls, tins of toms etc. But I also ensure that we have healthy home cooked meals as often as possible not just because its healthier its also more affordable.

Well said Dan! Unfortunately for you the type of people who would read this blog, are the very same type of people who sympathise with the author – they offer no help to the people in need, and yet when someone who is actually trying, they decide that his efforts and points are worthless simply because the person in question is better off than they are.

Unfortunately, the type of people who read this blog are (in his eyes) the “type of people” Mr Oliver claims (on the one hand) to be unable to fathom, but then again to know vast amounts about how they live and their levels of education/intelligence (on the other). He has no right to pronounce on anyone’s ability to apportion their monies/feed their family. He is a cook and that’s it.

No, but because the person in question is a patronizing clueless fucker who is in denial about the true depths of poverty that shamefully exist in this fucking shit-hole of a country. And if people do dare be poor then it is obviously their own fault for owning a TV or a telephone, or shoes etc.

Totally agree Dan , People can chose to eat healthy and spend wisely, but they chose not too and don’t like to be told other wise. Jamie needs to be careful and accept the fact that some people won’t appreciate his advise. I don’t think he should give up thou. He has done many good things, but he also need to be aware that some people might also be jealous on his success and his popularity. The article seems to tweaks and turns on him because they want to sell story and make story more interesting. It will make Jamie even more popular so let them write what they want. Good on you Jamie.

You accuse some us of being jealous of his “success and popularity” but has it occurred to you that wealthy people like Jamie Oliver make harsh judgements about the poor to try and alleviate any guilt they might feel about having so much when others have so little? We only have ourselves to blame after all! I also have no doubt that his controversial statements are designed to sell his new book and promote his new TV show. You say he’s “done many good things” but from what I’ve seen, school dinners in state schools went downhill after he started interfering in them. He might have made them ‘healthier’ but at least they tasted better, were more likely to get eaten and filled children up in the past. Under the current government, school dinners have gone from bad to worse and portion sizes have become smaller. It also plans to remove the free school meals entitlement of many families. If Jamie Oliver was genuinely concerned about the poor, he would be making statements about those issues instead.

@tltc – Guilt, almost certainly – and fear of ‘the other’. It’s fear of the unfamiliar alone that drives Xenophobia (having a narrow/prescribed and prescriptive world view) and it always manifests as hostility, in one form or another, (and/or paternalistic (patronising) offers of ‘help’ (to try to transform ‘them’ into ‘PLU’) .

Would the likes of JO have it that we were all equally rich – I think not because in reality it would mean we would all be equally poor – this would be communism. They have little in terms of full consciousness and are not able to grasp the life lived by many but why would they? They just excuse themselves and keep on looking for ways to justify their existence. Does anyone know who owns the earth as an afterthought? Surely it must have an owner else on which / whose authority do people claim to own land / property? Truth is humanity is a ridiculous condition to be in.whether you consider yourself to be rich or poor, happy or unhappy, everyone is really fucked up with concepts of material gain. Yet again too the USA are looking for oil in Syria.

The earth was @1990s was (almost) ‘owned’ by the River Cafe, where you-know-who began his illustrious career. They sold delicious, nutritious and very expensive meals as well as several lovely cook books -as did their protege later on, in his own inimitable style. What was/is being sold (apart from some extremely good, but expensive – is a lifestyle and only a very few of the total inhabitants of this country – let alone of London – could decide to eat there or at other similar types of restaurants – whether or not that was their preference.

It’s the levels of inequality that most of us are (hopefully) objecting to, first and foremost – and the exponentially increasing gap between the (obscenely) rich few and the (equally obscenely impoverished) many. We understand that this is not somehow ‘inevitable’ but has been and continues to be engineered. Peter Townsend studied poverty in East London (around 40/50 years ago) with particular regard to its effects on children – the studies don’t make for fun reading. Then:-

“… through the 1970s was to develop a poverty line rooted in such rigorous social science that it would be impossible to dispute, although, by a cruel quirk of fate, the work culminated in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher was elected. After that, all the implications of his study for policy simply dropped off the political agenda. Townsend was a dogged chronicler of, and campaigner against, the subsequent widening of the income gap. But during the long Conservative years his was a marginal voice.

He had brief hopes when New Labour arrived, and especially after Tony Blair pledged to eliminate child poverty in 1999. In the end, however, he was left bitterly disillusioned, acknowledging that Blair and Gordon Brown were redistributing to the poor, but profoundly offended by the mean-spirited way in which he thought they went about it. He was troubled not only by the endless emphasis on benefit claimants who “played the system”, which he felt stigmatised the honest majority, but also by the reliance on tax credits, as opposed to simple entitlements that were paid as of right.” (from Townsend’s obituary; ‘The Guardian’)

Completely agree I was not keen on Jamie before but I have learnt to admire his drive and the fact that he tells it as it is. A bit concerned he is starting to look a bit of a bloater after going on about eating heathily though.

Really? I think you’re missing his point entirely. Jamie is actually saying – with very little effort, its possible to eat healthily for the same price as it is to eat a bucket of the shite that a large proportion of the buggy pushing peasants in velour tracksuits in this country feed to their unruly spawn. Its laziness and ignorance that leads people to believe that its ok to spend a tenner on shite, instead of spending the same tenner on some healthier alternatives, and still manage to feed your fucking family. Fucking peasants.

Class hatred? I grew up in a council estate, come from a family of 8, have been surrounded by heroin, alcohol, domestic abuse and poverty since the moment I was born. I have two children, I earn £22,000 a year and am a single parent. I still manage to feed my kids and budget my funds, so don’t you dare judge me or tell me I have a hatred of ‘classes’. 90% of the clowns who read this blog are sophies’ and millies’, they live in Ibiza for 6 months a year, surviving on their trust funds and living the life of faux hippies. Utter hypocritical bullshit.

“Fucking peasants” is spiteful yet you’re arguing on the side of an article entitled “Has There Ever Been a Bigger Prick Than Jamie Fucking Oliver”? Jamie fucking Oliver was generalising, and he generalised badly. Mostly we could all cook and eat better and the advice he and lots of others give on good food being cheaper is sound advice. I was eating crap all the time and Ive learned to fill my cupboards with cheap 2 kilo bags of mung beans and lentils and all I have to buy most weeks is a few onions and some garlic and one or two veg for my main meals. It would make sense to buy all your beans in bulk, pay delivery once and then anyone who could carry a bag of chips could lug a few onions and a bit of veg down the street, and they sell that veg shit everywhere.
I come from dirt poor family and my mum used to push my brother round the market in his pram and get me to bend under the stalls shoving damaged mouldy fruit and veg under it, and I ate well and grew up strong and healthy and with a good brain because of that food and nothing more.
I agree with Jamie Oliver even if I envy him his bank balance.
He didn’t mention disability in his argument so neither will I, it’s a separate issue.

Everything is a seperate issue these days, there is little or no sentiment for the “whole” of anything anymore. Disability is not mentioned but this affects 1,000’s of disabled people including the 0.000001% of abusers of the welfare benefits system

Disability is an issue within every bracket of society not just the poor and regarding nutrition. I myself am disabled but didn’t feel the need to add this to an argument about a comment J Oliver made that itself was not about disability.
And for the record I’ve enjoyed teaching myself to cook complex indian vegetarian dishes the past few months when I had no cooking knowledge, and was very very poor (and I eat meat, but cut it out for cost and health and environmental reasons). I’ve taught myself something amazing and have learned to cook cheaper food than ever before and gained loads of pride in now being able to make up my own Indian inspired recipes that taste amazing and are nutritious – all with a new spice each week from the local Indian supermarket at about 60p for a huge bag. I can cook a Thai soup for pence just because I gradually built up the spices to do it and buy very little each week.
All over the country are countless Indian/Middle eastern/ Chinese supermarkets with cheap spices and pulses. Most people can access these. And not ALL disabled poor people can’t get out, or get help OCCASIONALLY to buy healthy food. Carers do cook if there’s a recipe that’s quick and not too complicated for anybody to follow.
I can’t go out without help. And I have a big TV. And I can throw some lentils in a pan and brown a few onions. And I can make suggestions without generalising every little thing.

lucybuus…
there are no separate issues, one just can’t cut off limbs of an argument to satisfy a particular point, one must engender the whole body of an argument to be able to fully appreciate it’s value..

Bollocks and thats a fact. You titted about and were lazy in school which meant you ended up in a shit job, you can’t get out of your shit job due to your inherent laziness. You probably clock in at 9.00 arse about have too long for lunch then leave at 17.00 on the dot and 16.30 on Fridays. You don’t get money by doing the minimum so stop envying hard workers which Jamie is well known to be and good on him for it.

My partner works (a hard manual labour job) from 6am to 6pm for 6 days a week after spending 17 years in the army whilst I work from home trying like stink to set up a business for us to make our way in life but we’re still living hand to mouth!
We’ve got a widescreen telly though…..We got it out of a skip and it works a fucking treat!
We are both hard working and I am highly educated but I was struck down by the onset of a genetic condition which had laid dormant so we exist primarily on my partner’s wage. Ergo, we are poor.
By JO’s reckoning this immediately makes us feckless, lazy and stupid. Unable to see the benefit in a decent meal.
Why on EARTH he asks himself, would a 6ft tall 10stone woman, a 6ft 6″ 17stone man, a growing boy of 12 and a 16 year old girl not purchase a bag of mussels, tomatoes, maybe some wine and some fresh herbs instead of taking advantage of the supermarket’s meal deal resulting in a casserole for four, vegetable side dish, potatoes and dessert for the same price?! I’ll tell you shall I Jamie? Because my fucking family don’t go to bed hungry after the meal deal!!
I’m not proud of it, I’m an old fashioned girl and when money and pain levels allow I love to cook…..but I’m lucky. Not everyone is physically or fiscally able and they should NOT be demonized by the upper middle classes for it!
It was a shameful attack and I truly don’t understand those defending him. May you never have to know true hardship.

Johnny Void comes across as a far more poisonous cretin than Jamie. Granted he’s a bit of a dick sometimes, but he’s spent a lot of his career investing heavily in young people, trying to feed school children healthily and generally promoting good living. Johnny Void should find something else to write his over romanticised nonsense that quite obviously only appeals to the over emotional shrieking grief of twats.

More absolute guff from some middle class fud. Most poor people can’t afford regular nights out so if they ever get some money a wide screen TV makes absolute sense, Its the only entertainment they get. Also, I live in a poor community, an ex mining area. Its among the most deprived in Scotland and there is no regular market selling fresh fruit and veg, we rely on Morrison’s. In any case, for many a carry out is a treat, they can’t afford fancy restaurants where olive oil, beancurds and cherry tomatoes are top ingredients and the taste comes from the freshenss of the product, they can only afford places where trans fats makes sure the cheap ingredients at least have some flavour even if it will bring an early death. But its a treat not a staple but hey Oliver you horrible snobby git with the pretendy accent, you just wouldn’t fucking know would you. “oooo, I’ve been to poor places”. Have you really Jamie, very fucking well done that man. Perhaps you can afford to travel abroad to poor places. Us fucking peasants here can’t do that because we can’t afford to. Instead We live poverty 24 hours a day

You only have yourself to blame if you live in poverty. Every kid has access to education, no matter what their background. Stop sounding like a broken record and do something about it, instead of whinging like a bitter old man.

Oh, Dan. “You only have yourself to blame if you live in poverty”….what a bloody stupid thing to say – shame you didn’t avail yourself of the “education” you also mention because then you might be able to stop yourself making such incredibly naïve statements which are untrue.

“We are lucky enough to live in a free country. We can get loans for education, which we only have to pay back once we are employed.

There isn’t really a better place in the world to be for a fair chance at life”.

Don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention student loans as a sign of a free and fair country! In the days when largely the elite few went to university, local authorities paid everyone’s course fees and there were no student loans, only grants for those on low incomes. It was only after increasing numbers of working class people started going into higher education that grants were gradually replaced with loans. Not surprisingly, the prospect of future debt put off many of those from poorer backgrounds that would have otherwise gone. It’s true that people with degrees are more likely to work and earn more but that often depends on the hierarchy of the subject studied and at which university. Why do you think most of those sitting on the front benches went to Oxbridge? The idea that we all have the same opportunities in life is an illusion.

“Do something about it”? Like what? Work two jobs and still find oneself unable to afford anything once the bills and rent have been paid? There are many in this country who work hard but are still poor. It’s not a lack of effort that makes people poor, it’s a lack of money.

Yes… you can’t make them give you a job. You and the 498 other applicants who were turned away.

Example price of box of strawberries at a local DISCOUNT shop today: £2.50. This could buy one cheese packet (lasts 3 days) and 2 days of pasta, or alternatively no cheese packet (so nothing to eat with the pasta) and 2 weeks’ 1-a-day rations of pasta. Cheese £2 per pack, pasta 32p per 500g.
Now imagine following the advice and instead buying the strawberries. Healthy, good for you, tasty for the few minutes it takes you to eat them.
After an hour or so later the hunger pangs kick in. Where’s the next course? Turns out that there is NO next course. And no meal of any kind for…. oh, only 2 weeks!!! Because you blew the whole of your food budget on a pack of strawberries.

And people wonder why people (which now includes me) have been eating from bins.

So those in poverty only have themselves to blame do they, Dan? You are one smug, pompous git or you’re one of IDS’s goons, you certainly wouldn’t be the first one to turn up on this blog.
As for Jamie Oliver, could never stand the sanctimonous, two-faced twat, pontificating about what the rest of us should eat, all the while being seen more than once taking his kids to McDonald’s!

There are people where I live that probably have more qualifications than you do you self promotory twat Dan O’connell, yet unless they leave family, friends and familiarity they will remain poor, so stop lecturing people you arrogant ignoramus.

Because being epileptic and therefore being forced to give up my career as a care assistant to the elderly with dementia when I wanted to become an RGN was a choice. Because being turned down for jobs by people who fear epilepsy and those who have it is a choice.

Right; of course it is. I can’t even chop a beetroot without injuring myself, so please do enlighten me as to how poverty is my fault? My husband’s too, as my condition means that he has to shop, cook, clean, help me with personal care, wake up several times a night to check that I’m actually still breathing and run me to and from hospital appointments. Something you obviously don’t love anyone enough to make sacrifices for. I’m assuming that this is the reason you are a single father, because you are a sanctimonious, self-absorbed, pompous berk.

You try being long-term sick and classed as unemployable Dan, and see how you cope when you’re reduced to an Asda £1 pizza so that you can pay for a phone line that you might actually die without. Or desperately hoping to find a penny – just a penny mind – on the street so you can buy value tea bags that don’t even taste much like tea.

I’ve agreed with everything you’ve said up until this point. Home life effects kids development from a very young age and many people do not have the same opportunities to thrive. Poorer areas have more mental illness (due to people with mental illness being more likely to fall to the bottom rung of society) and educational poverty etc etc etc and life is not as easy.
I don’t see how we can’t all make sense of both sides of this argument.
People are not to blame for their poverty. They are to blame for their poor diet, 70% (this is a rough number) of the time.
It doesn’t have to mean overhaul everything you eat just make better choices.

Sorry Lucybuus, they’re not to blame for their poor diet. As you’ve just said, not everyone is dealt an equal hand. Some people are limited by access to ‘the best/cheapest’ options (eg. I don’t live anywhere near an Aldi – when I can get a lift, I shop there and save lots of money on 3/4 days worth of shopping – if I’m lucky enough to have the money on that particular day of the fortnight/month – and I’m not having to pay the ‘so-called’ bedroom tax – but am having to find council tax now out of what was previously food/household money).

What has happened is that people have been pushed gradually into accepting a lower and lower ‘minimum’ amount (both in terms of wages and of benefits) to try to make ends meet. All the comments/sentiments about making the most of what you have are admirable But are not the point that (as I understand it) jv and those angry with current government policies – nasty, vicious and criminal (& JO’s comments – equally pernicious in their own way) are making.

Who are the likes of Jamie Oliver to give judgement? He and his ilk all shit in the same pot same as likes of SIR Jimmy Savile, Dave Lee Travis, Rolf Harris (opps last 2 not conicted yet). These are the weirdos on the planet, not the common man and woman.

”95% of the time people use money as an excuse to eat badly. Really it is laziness. You cannot sit there and tell me buying a frozen pizza and chips is cheaper than some rice, fish/pulses and vegetables. BULLSHIT.”

dan
if one has a freezer, then it is defrosted 1st
i personally would not bake it..but to live as you say which i am not knocking to bake is great..but it is access to infrastructure…shops, money, cookers freezers, time, skills, and many other things..the pressure of the gradual slump into poverty is immense, and getting worse people are being torn apart by the poverty grind, and having to constantly seek work, people are preoccupied with many different factors of living, there are few jobs and 5m unemployed and rising the demand for cheap food is massive..

I am from the UK but have been living in Turkey for 5 years. Within the first year I lost 5 stone in weight without even trying, and noticed a dramatic improvement in my general health and physical abilities. I do not make a point of scrutinising my fat/ sugar/ salt intake it is just that all my food is made from scratch using fresh ingredients- as a result I know exactly what I am putting in my body. Ready meals and frozen options are available to me, however the cost of these products are sometimes 10 times more expensive than making the food myself.
2 months ago I visited the UK for the first time in 5 years with my son who is 18 months. I was absolutely appalled at the price of fresh, healthy foods in the UK.- I know this isn’t a recent thing but guess I had somewhat forgotten the extent of it. In Turkey, I never give my soon any proccessed foods, sweets or crisps. He snacks on fresh fruit, nuts and dried fruit that I make myself during summer months and drinks water or juice that I have squeezed. Luckily I was on holiday so purchasing these overpriced goods for a few weeks didnt prove too much of an issue for me.
It is easy to understand why people opt for ready, frozen meals because the alternative works out so much more expensive. Even when you compare prices of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat in a large chainstore like Tescos compared to frozen options from say Iceland the difference is unbelievable. Buying a frozen pizza for a pound from Iceland is far cheaper than making a healthier option from scratch- forget the time it takes or ability to go shopping (as the argument seems to be gearing towards).
I neither love nor hate Jamie Oliver, infact I dont have any kind of opinion of him, however eating healthy with fresh foods is 100% more expensive than feeding your family frozen/ ready products. I am not just talking about people on the line of poverty, when I was in the UK I did not claim benefits, had a good job, am not disabled and had access to the internet- my shopping was always purchased online- however I ate crap because it was far cheaper.

Sirleynott, dont get me wrong we have our fair share of issues too but healthwise they seem to have got the balance right – even if i do miss the occasional KFC lol (tellingly my holiday in the UK for 6 weeks resulted in a 2 stone weight gain!!!). Guests are always welcome 😉

Hello Louise. You make fine points and they do support the opinion of this blog strongly. Price is clearly a factor in healthy and fresh food in the UK. In Britain growing seasons are quite different and supermarkets (which Jamie Oliver endorses via advertising) have squeezed out local markets and suppliers. The result is in UK fresh food is not supplied nearer to cost and on tap even when its in season and actually fresh. This is a big part of the difference. The foods are quite different also in terms of high energy store-able snacks like nuts. In Britain fresh food is rarely fresh but artificially stored for prolonged periods and picked highly prematurely so it has poor flavour and nutritional value.

We have to freeze much of our food to preserve it and although that can add some costs it saves overall by reducing wastage potentially. Much ‘fresh’ food is not very edible at time of purchase so it gets forgotten and goes off. Its only natural to not expect unappealing foods to not get eaten in preference over engineered less healthy processed foods.

Food processing is also not the problem per se either. Food processing like frozen ready meals using regional fresh ingredients when they are available and flash freezing methods preserve nutrients, allow normally thrown misshapen or not very cosmetic but perfectly nutritious veg and fruit to be used at lower cost and can make nutritious sauces, soups and fruit smoothies more efficiently that moving goods around with high loses during transit and in store (more than 50%) and high losses of food going off at home (again a high fraction). Freezing these again prevents wastage at home. Processed food can be MORE nutritious and should be more efficient and cheaper not less.

A major part of the reason it isnt is due to lack of food standards and subsidies going into bulk agricultural junk ingredients designed for food processing like potatoes and vegetable oil which makes for cheap crisps and chips.

Cost is the main reason the poor dont eat healthily, and as research also shows, stress plays a big part. It becomes engrained and it is now also proven that as families adopt junk food they dont expose toddlers and babies to fresh food and veg and this rewires the brain to find such healthy foods highly unappealing. It really is not the fault of the poor it is an artificially created problem.

Vimes’ Boots, sir, Vimes’ Boots…. You may very well be able to make a great many pizzas for less than 50p a pizza, but 39p per pizza (from your own numbers) only works if you can afford to buy enough groceries at a time to make 64 pizzas (and don’t mind going a little short on olive oil for the last half dozen – but by that stage any variety at all is probably an improvement – if you can taste anything through the metallic tang of week-old tinned tomatoes).

Yes, if you make 64 pizzas you can do them for £25, rather than the £64 you’d need to buy the supermarket stuff – BUT you’d need the £25 all at once, and oddly enough, that can be all but impossible.

You need to be educated about life, sir. All of that costs time which is something that a lot of people simply don’t have. Or would you rather low paid workers simply quit their jobs so they can spend more time at home with their kids, and be able to home cook everything?

Why the obsession with pizza? it’s unhealthy, a pizza base is of virtually no nutritional value whatsoever. Pizza is a treat and for those wealthy enough to have with a delicious topping properly made in a restaurant. You are failing to take account of the cost of cooking the pizza (average £2.00 per hour of oven on, including heating time – check cost of your own oven – but remember thousands are trying to manage on less than £10 a week for food, including cost of cooking, and can’t afford new A-A++ rated appliances). Topping only with processed meat high in fat, are you mad? A wholemeal egg sandwich far more nutritious and doesn’t include the cost of heating an oven.

Bulk buying is not practical when carrying shopping on foot or even if you can afford it, on a bus.

As to the effects of illness and disability, you really should be ashamed of your lack of thought and ignorance. Shame on you. Thousands have to have help to get out of bed, get dressed and cook. Many are in severe pain some are fighting for each breath they take. Shopping and cooking is physically beyond many. You’ve had an education yet you seem incapable of thought. Shame on you.

I have Lived in Sicily for 7 years now, no I am not a street cleaner but I have to answer this one as Sicilians eat pizza every week, they eat lasagne too………….. they make their own pizza and their own pasta and for those who don’t know you don’t need to heat your oven for hours to cook a pizza as a home made pizza will cook in minutes..

You’ve just reminded me, I was in Florence a couple of years ago and spotted a chip pizza. This wasn’t a touristy place, just a little take away place in the suburbs, selling lots of different pizza slices.

Dan, I notice from earlier comments that you are self-employed, I hate to worry you, but even when economy is healthy, new businesses take an average of 3 years to make a profit and start up costs have to be acquired. Only a small percentage of new businesses will make it in this economic climate and those trying to do this would need support to survive (maintain a roof over their head and living costs). It would be completely irresponsible to attempt to do this with dependent children and no start up capital. Most parents don’t want to end up homeless and their children taken into care or living in one room in bed and breakfast.

Just ignore these cretins. People are poor because they made bad life choices or are too lazy to improve themselves. I eat healthy on an incredibly cheap budget (uni student), 1kg of chicken breast from Asda is £3.99 and 1kg of chicken thighs is £1.75 and pasta is 30p a bag so if someone wants to explain to me how chicken and pasta/rice (reasonably healthy dishes) costs more pizza and chips I would be quite surprised. The fact of the matter is, people aren’t budgeting right or aren’t working if they can’t afford basic healthy foods. I don’t understand why everyone is up in arms because Jamie Oliver is supposedly not catering to the extremely poor/lazy. The last time I checked, he didn’t owe those on a budget a complete guide to cooking for a pittance.

‘People are poor because they made bad life choices or are too lazy to improve themselves’ If that’s the kind of ‘knowledge’ that University has taught you, you ought ask for you money back Chanelle, you’ve been robbed!!!!

My universities didn’t teach rubbish like that thank god. We actually learned all about the root causes of poverty and taught us to criticise that kind of rubbish. Her university must truly be the stinking pits, that is if she even goes to lessons; the stuck up, well provided in life, bitch types tend not to turn up in for lessons, too busy sleeping in a gutter due to binge drinking constantly. (Aww see how fun stereotypes are…)

This assinine comment only serves to tell me that your idea of poverty is many people’s idea of being comfortably off. Poor certainly doesn’t mean lazy; those that aren’t to disabled to leave the house half the time are pounding the pavements looking for jobs that simply aren’t out there.

Exactly. What I wouldn’t give to be able to shop without having to size up which pack of fresh mince is the most cost effective, or which inferior cleaning product will work the best for my money. I only want free range meat in the house, lean cuts and the occasional luxury item such as samphire, but if it’s not on the “scavvy rack” I can forget all about the best quality produce and free range anything because I can’t afford it. Not going hungry is a luxury in itself these days.

So give us some of your extortionate salary so that we don’t have to, “doctor”. Did you know that a pizza has far more nutritional value than a lettuce leaf a a carrot? I’d rather eat a pizza than be too busy being dead from starvation to be able to eat anything at all.

Most fishermen no longer sell direct, a whole mass of “value added” companies are put between the food supply and the person wanting to buy, from wholesale buyers, shippers, wholesale resellers, shippers, and finally retail outlet, same for just about any form of food… a huge supply chain adding “value” (in real terms cost) but this is all good as it bumps up gdp and massive profits for shareholders while the poor man in the street can’t afford the final price, so has to do with some tainted meat source ready meal which is produced to a price not a quality but still has profit.

Meanwhile the local butcher has closed due to the ludicrously expensive council charges, business rates, lack of free parking, while the waitrose/tesco/asda megga store pays significantly less in real terms per sq foot and is set up to avoid those damn pesky taxes by setting up clever offshore tax schemes that somehow never get closed.

But they’ll have enough cash for Superkings, pints of bitter or double vodkas and a trip to the bookies every day? There is no pleasing some people, Jamie is quite obviously trying to mobilise people into changing their thinking – YES it is possible to eat healthily for cheaper than you think, YES perhaps its not as a cheap as a shitty Iceland £1 pizza, but I would rather sacrifice cigarettes, booze and bookies and feed my kids something better, than give them saturated fates and guarantee early death from cardiac arrest.

Who is we? I’m talking from experience about the families in my community that I grew up with and still live with. An entire housing estate of people who managed to buy booze, cigarettes and go the bookies, yet felt it was perfectly ok to buy their kids chips and gravy for dinner 7 nights a week because they had no cash left to buy something healthier.

When I was on the Work Programme not a single one of the other 50 odd other people on it bought cigarettes or went to the pub at lunch time and certainly not the bookies. The contrast with the stereotype you’re presenting couldn’t be more extreme. If they smoked at all, it was roll-ups with duty free tobacco. You obviously have no concept of poverty, other than as it is misrepresented in the Daily Mail.

I would rather kill myself than read a thing from that racist rag Anton. I grew up on a council estate and saw first hand all my life how people lived in my area. And again, I’m talking about the demographic of people who Jamie is obviously trying to target – the people who DO NOT make an effort to balance their lives and diets. I’m not talking about the people who go without, such as the people you’ve mentioned above.

I have a can of Guinness with my evening meal which gives me iron, “B”-vitamins and loads of probiotic bacteria. At a cost of about £1.06 for a can of Guinness (from a 4-pack @ £4.25) it’s far much better for you than a can of Coke, costing about 80p or more. So, TopBoy, don’t slag off those of us who DO spend a little money on a daily drink.

What are you talking about? Hello, reality calling – people are walking miles to foodbanks including people who are working and are paid too little to live. 500,000 people have used foodbanks in last year. There are children without shoes, adequate clothing, with rickets and swollen bellies from hunger IN THE UK. If you aren’t horrified you aren’t paying attention. This is serious. We are talking about extreme poverty a real need for food aid, clothing and shoes in the UK. There is no room for the luxury of making choices for 100,000s, it’s a matter of trying to stay alive, SURVIVAL, of parents trying to fill hungry tummies This winter poverty will be deadly for the malnourished and inadequately dressed, I sincerely hope it’s mild and short and that fuel prices do not rise again.

So, don’t the poor OUTSIDE OF THE UK count at all? Sure, it’s sad that hundreds of thousands of people in the UK are so poor that they are struggling to feed themselves. But elsewhere in the world are tens or hundreds of millions for whom foodbanks would seem like a luxury. Get some perspective!!!

Mike C., what is the valid point? That (some) people are starving in African countries and (some, increasing numbers of) children and adults are going hungry/beginning to suffer from rickets/malnutrition in this country? It’s missing the point by miles to claim that ‘at least we have food banks” – there’s no reason why everyone in this country (& in others) shouldn’t have enough to eat.

TVL rely on people’s ignorance and use skullduggery to gain “confessions”.

They knock on your door > You let them in > You have a great big TV sat in the living room > You make some stupid excuse such as “I don’t watch the BBC”. > They fill in the Record of Visit Form i.e. “confession > You sign > Court Summons in the Post

TVL goons are on a basic salary of £17,000 with OTE of £27,000. They receive a “commission” of £20 for every licence they sell (you will STILL be taken to Court though) i.e over an 8 hour shift they expect to make 2 “collars.

DO NOT answer TVL’s threatograms.
DO NOT answer the door to them.
NEVER, EVER let these cunts over your doorstep!!

Even if you DON’T have a TV these cunts still EXPECT you to buy a fucking TV licence!!

Jamie Oliver’s latest unthinking and ignorant comments really makes my blood boil. His mouth should be literally stitched up so he can really talk out of his backside as that is the true origin of everything he said about the poor.

I follow your articles with interest, and for the most part agree with many of your posts.
But I’m afraid this time I cannot.
My partner has a reduced immunity due to chemotherapy and needs to be very careful with what she eats, I myself have health problems the least of which is diabetes which also means my diet is very important.
We are both totaly benefit dependent we are also one of the thousands kicked in the teeth with the bedroom tax so have very little free cash. But we have found that you can eat a very healthy and cheap diet if you try, is it easy ? No………is it worth it ? Damned right it is……fresh pasta for two people takes 20 mins and costs about a quid, half a pound of toms from any high street a 100gms of even the cheapest mince and yes a few herbs from the garden, ……that’s a very healthy meal for two people for £3.50, is this way of doing stuff a way for everyone, I doubt it.we plan meals up to a week ahead so we can use anything we buy so as not to waste anything. For most people this can work if you try. We had to make it work for us because of our problems and have found not only is it better for us it, is cheaper than the our old way of buying crappy ready meals and takeaways, so please don’t attack the message just because you don’t like the messenger

I really like your comment, Graeme. In my bad old poor days, I used to live on pasta with home made tomato sauce, freshened up with home grown basil; or red lentil dahl with brown rice; or soup made with broccoli ends and carrots with home made bread. All cheap as chips, but dead healthy and you need to feel good when you’re skint. However, if I’d had no idea how to cook, I would have been stuffed. I was lucky.

I find Oliver to be an odious twat and his comments on TVs are bang out of order, but his general message about food is a good one. As much as it pains me to say…

On that basis you would be spending nearly £25 per week just for the ingredients of the evening meal. That’s without cost of cooking. If you add in the other meals of the day and essentials such as milk and bread it would be around £50 a week. That’s a conservative estimate. Yes, that’s cheap. But we are living in a time where people are being forced to live on £10 or £20 a week. Week in, week out. Relentless, grinding, poverty and malnutrition.This is a whole new world of want that this country hasn’t seen since the thirties. The desecration of the economy and the welfare state by this Government won’t be reversed by millionaire idiots like Jamie Oliver telling us to make our own bread. This is propaganda. And let’s not forget that Oliver has his sights on becoming a Tory MP in the future. This is all part of the long game for the odious, self-promoting little prick.

You’ve neglected the fact that the £3.50 was a meal for two people. So that’s only about £12 per week for one person. Add in other meals and that would come to £25 per week. That is certainly affordable even if you are living on JSA at just over £70 per week. Yes, some people may not be able to spend £25 per week on food due to other expenses e.g. debts to pay off. And it may be more difficult for large families. But how many people are in such a situation? I think there are larger numbers of people who spend more than £25 per week on food and drink, and yet many of them eat unhealthily. Well, that’s their choice, but those people can’t blame it on lack of money because they do have enough to eat healthily.

I lived in a much poorer country than the UK, where people have considerably less money to spend on food. And yet most of them still cook at home – pre-prepared food and takeaways are seen as a luxuries. Food is cheaper there, but people still spend a higher proportion of their money on food than people do here. When you look at other countries in Europe, you realise that takeaways and ready meals are a cultural preference in the UK – it has little to do with poverty.

Graham I could have been reading about my husband and myself with your comment. Although I didn’t have chemo I had radio and am now recovering from more surgery for cancer. We buy cheap mince (unless the decent stuff is on offer and then we buy that and make it stretch). We add frozen £1 a bag of mixed peppers to many of our meals. We buy boil in the bag rice £1 for box of 4 which makes 4 meals for hubby and self. Bulk that with onions, peas, frozen peppers and serve with frozen fish or any or special/reduced offers that can be had in supermarkets add spices and herbs and you have tasty and filling meals. It can be done but mot always easy eh. Hope all goes well with your wife and sending get well wishes.

Next in Channel Four’s special ‘Poverty Porn’ season: Jamie Oliver shows you how to make a stunning gourmet meal with just ingredients found in your typical food bank parcel and going through rubbish bins in the street.

Love this article – says it like it really is for so many people. And bloody hell Top Boy – you are incredibly scathing about the people you grew up with! And you might do well to remember, you are only a P45 away from being one of them. And not everyone who is financially poor behaves in an irresponsible way, feeding their minds with X factor, while chuffing on the fags and swallowing the special brew, all so their kids have to live on chips and curry from the local fried chicken shop – some people on benefits (none of whom you have met obviously) try to balance their lives and the diets of their kids to be as full and as healthy as it is possible to be on a very limited income. Stop being so condemnatory of your own social class Top Boy.

I think you’re missing my point Rebecca, sorry if I’ve not come across clearly – isn’t it clear that the EXACT people I’m talking about are the people that Jamie Oliver is targeting? I’m not talking about people who DO balance their lives and diets. I’m talking about the people who don’t; the exact demographic he’s trying to get his message across to. And regardless of what ‘dream world’ I’m being accused of living in, please don’t try to tell me that more than not do NOT balance their lives and diets?.

Of course you are right Top Boy in your point about there being “some” people who fail to live their lives in a healthy, morally and financially responsible way – does that mean it’s right to tar everyone who has a large flat screen TV (and is “poor”) in the same way with the same proverbial brush? No. That’s my point. Plenty of people who have a big TV are good parents, who struggle to feed their family rather than funding their smoking habit and sky tv subscription.

Yes,lets just point out the ones that we don’t think are doing or making “The right choices” Better yet,lets start the rail cars rolling to re-education camps,we can round up all the undesirables….Asshole,you are the “EXACT” type that creates problems.

Even if everything you said is true, what gives you the right to tell people how they should eat, or what they spend their money on? And how are you, specifically, qualified to judge others? “Balance their lives and diets”, what nonsense! You sound like someone flogging a self help book, not someone who can understand the pressures of balancing a low paid job with raising a family, or even just trying to deal with the realities of having virtually no money.

Everyone has the right to tell other people anything they want (with some exceptions) – it’s one of the fundamental rights even in an imperfect democracy (and there are many that are far worse than the UK). No one is forced to listen to Jamie Oliver or to read interviews with him in the Guardian. I really don’t see what the fuss is about – it’s not as if JO is forcing healthy food down peoples throats or taking their money away from them and buying them fresh fruit and veg.

You have the right to spend you money on junk food if you want, and I have the right to criticise you for it. If you can’t take the criticism then maybe you should think twice about what you’re spending your money on.

I’ll be more than condemnatory of people who use ‘I’m poor’ as an excuse, same as I would be to the troves of single mums from my area who think its ok to feed their kids on a Jumbo Greggs Sausage Roll and a bottle of Coke, while they themselves chug on a Lambert and Butler that cost £7.50 for a packet.

Do you see what they feed their children at home Top Boy? I often buy my son a Greggs sausage roll (and drink) as a treat if we are in town. That doesn’t mean he eats shit the rest of the time.
And I don’t smoke either.

probably £1 Iceland Pizzas which is the point I think topboy is tryin to make no? They can buy fags but will still continue to feed shit to their kids. I don’t smoke, I buy an occasional greggs pasty or sausage roll for my kids, but I still get the point tb is tryin to make! too many defensive peeple on this board

“probably £1 Iceland Pizzas” – there you go again – another generalisation. The point I’m trying to make is you shouldn’t generalise! You cannot possibly know what that said theoretical woman ^ feeds her kid when she takes them home! She might whip up a 9p spicy bean burger in wholemeal bun for all you know…and you say any different, you yourself are subscribing to and perpetuating prejudicial stereotypical notions. And of course people are defensive – They are sick of being demonised and sodding trodden on!

Buggy pushing velour clad perma tanned cock breath sluts. Feeding their nippers on pizzas is not acceptable. They should all be shot the lot of them. I don’t know one single slut who could whip up a 9p spicy bean burger.

If they gave me a £7.50 food stamp (extra) a week for specifically fruit/veg, that would improve my health. Many of the people I see buying the frozen ‘junk food’ are too tired and pressed for time to cook because they’re holding down two crappy jobs AND dealing with kids, mortgage or rent, bills, repairs, expenses. Others, with just the one job, are not quite so pressurised but are still really struggling. Most of the people I know on the dole can’t afford to buy junk food; and (when eaten) it’s a treat that punctuates several days in a row of eating fuck-all. You need calories, carbohydrates, protein, salt. You need something to deal with cold temperatures, and the physical exertion of day to day life and jobseeking (like for example walking miles in falling-apart shoes to jobsearch or attend JCP/WP.). Plus it uses energy to stand in queues, to shop, to carry shopping, to clean the house and cook the food. If you have ME/CFS you often can’t do all the above, or can do some, often can do none at all so go without food. If you have no helper, then you just go without all the things that on a good day you could do for yourself.

Yesterday was my first food in 5 days, I’ll not describe the effects but anyone who wants can read up on starvation and the effects in the body of changed levels of sodium, potassium, calcium, and of course the buildup of ketones from not eating. If there’s no fat left, the body starts eating muscle tissue.

1) There was no food 2) There was no money 3) No phone 4) No helper 5) I was sick so couldn’t cook if there HAD been food 6) Lots of seizures this past week. 7) I had to wait for the money to come in and then first make sure I paid the rent.
Finally today I got money, I was briefly optimistic but as soon as I paid my rent money out and bills, there is sod-all left!
Ironically financially-speaking this is a GOOD month, with the most income per calendar month in the whole year.

I agree that you can buy cheap foods and make them go far, but the point is we do not want overpaid, overexposed middle class morons telling us how we should eat or what we should or should not be able to afford with regards to household goods.
My aunt has just died aged 103 she ate fatty foods for most of her life and smoked so we do not want the health fascists dictating to us about what is or is not going to kill us. Smoking is blamed for a lot of industrial diseases such as lead paint used by painters, flour constantly inhaled by bakers and a multitude of other industrial products that have caused lung disease, but if any of those smoked then the cigarettes will be blamed because we wouldn’t want to start suing industry would we.

As I said at the end of my post, don’t condemn the message because you don’t like the messenger.
I personally like the job he is trying to do and the “overexposed middle class morons“ as you call them are the only people with the backing to get the message out, after all its got us talking here and that really is all he’s after
Let’s face it, the ones that really need the help will be glad of it no matter where it comes from. But it will not change the way anyone who does not care

What message is he getting out other than to say eat healthily and cheaply, does he deserve to be paid so much of licence payers money to do so? As I said the powers that be change their mind from one minute to the next about what is or is not healthy for us anyway and their message is usually dictated by marketeers.

Oh, get some perspective! If you’d actually lived in a dictatorship then you’d know what the word really means. No one in the UK is dictating anything – if you don’t like what people tell you to eat then you can ignore them. It’s that simple!

lets all “teleport”, ourselves to new realities/false realities, enter the tv or a waged scillian street cleaner, a job with many perks..the key being ACCESS, to top quality products at a minimum price…

“””Traditionally violent revolution has been considered one of the best ways out of poverty. Jamie Oliver should consider that before he delivers his next Marie Antoinette routine. Let him eat lead.””” <<<<<<<<<< WELL YES, THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE TRUTH, GOOD POINT MADE. When the revolution comes say those celebrity types who's only knowledge is what a tomato and frying pan looks like WILL NEED RE-EDUCATION to help their stupid minds grasp REALITY.

So what is your problem? Who exactly is forcing you (or anyone else) into a Jamie Oliver restaurant every day, emptying your wallet and buying you spaghetti and ice cream? Because if no one is, then the prices he charges are completely irrelevant. If you don’t like them, then don’t eat there – it’s that simple!

Well its true aint it? Stop banging on about how you don’t have money to feed your fucking kids. You didn’t have money before you had them either, so you shouldn’t have brought a child into the world if you couldn’t afford to look after it. You wouldn’t buy a car if you couldn’t afford it, so why is a child any different?

I’ve got 3 kids and am a great parent. What on earth have overpopulated foreign communities got to do with anything? Guy Fawkes? Bet you’re another back pack wearing guardian reading liberal who thinks he’s an activist when in reality he’s just a clown. Go save your badgers somewhere else you dick.

Your narrow minded view of procreation and it’s cause and effect proves to me you will not be teaching your children how to be kind, that is if they are your children and your not a step parent, because your the only one that sounds like a prick to me.

Being a ‘great’ parent includes teaching your children about being respectful, compassionate and understanding about people less fortunate without being patronising. Doesn’t sound like you are much of a role model to me not when you show such contempt to others

Does DoleScum know anything about Biology and Nature. The concept of property and ownership screwed the world up in 2008 but just as is typical, the ” HAVES’ ” in the world, not just in the UK, make sure they keep all they can and fuck those who they see as lesser than they. Their price / cost will be paid elsewhere. Cause and effect is a certain reality!

I had my “Adviser/Mentor/I Don’t Know” mention that being on benefits,”I do not look like I am starving” to a point true,but eating fucking Tesco value beans at least twice daily is not doing any good when it comes to my health!

Having lived as a child in extreme poverty, I can say with some authority that we never had any recipies for stale bread. It was all eaten well before it had a chance to get stale. That man and the people he represents have never really suffered poverty.

Tell me about it ! He is totally clueless when it comes to being poor. I have had periods in my life where I was totally poor, I work hard but have always struggled. About three times I have been homeless, sleeping on mattresses
on factory floors, having no money and wondering where my next meal would come from. Being treated badly because of circumstances that I have no control of. Its very hard, and then when you see pomped up smiling git on the box telling everybody he is going to make their life better with some cooking lessons. Its an in-your-face fuck you,
If these rich bastards want to really help, they could share the wealth. But we know nothing short of an act of God would make this happen.

I’m fortunate to live in Ibiza, Daddy pays for Lucie and I to stay in a rather nice villa and because we have money we tend to spend a lot of it in quite a short space of time. Its nice to be rich, I do wish people would stop going on about poverty in the newspapers, it really does bore me. I don’t care about poor people they make me feel sick to be frankly honest

I sometimes eat Tofu or Soya, as I am a vegetarian, but I have noticed over the last few years that there is a quite different and rather more sinister agenda afoot. The media, including BBC, are often promoting the eating of insects. I think they are trying to introduce the idea into our collective psyche so that one day it will be accepted. I suspect that the UN are behind this campaign.

…or perhaps Butterfly Butties? Actually though, I do sometimes use Moth Beans, which are nothing to do with insects but are tiny beans, very tasty & nutritious, and only £1.29 per 500g pack, which plus a few Onions, Garlic, & spices makes a week’s worth of curry.

Actually the BBC hasn’t ‘promoted’ the eating of insects, but rather produced a documentary highlighting the fact that insects are an efficient and affordable source of protein for many millions of people. However, humans are quite culturally sensitive when it comes to food, and certainly most of us, (including me) wouldn’t fancy eating insects. The programme was interesting, but I doubt that it would persuade many from cultures that have no tradition of eating insects. I’m sure that as a food they are a perfectly good source of protein, about which there is nothing sinister, as already millions of people eat insects as part of their normal everyday diet, however unappealing that may be for us Europeans. I think the programme was made to highlight the problems we all face about adequately nourishing a growing population, and suggesting insects as a a potential solution was almost guaranteed to have sufficient gag factor to capture our attention and perhaps make us think a little about how we source our food.

I think the point he’s trying to make is that healthy food doesn’t need to be expensive. He may have missed the mark with his choice of ingredients and lengthy cooking times (altho mussels are cheap and a slow cooker takes very little electricity and effort) but his point about less waste and cheaper products from markets and greengrocers is valid. Not all markets are posh, remember? Like in Eastenders? Yes he’s a bit of an annoying prick but he is trying to get a useful message across…..it just gets a bit tied up on his fat tongue.

who is to say what is and isn’t healthy for you, scientific and medical opinion changes from one year to the next and as I pointed out earlier some people can eat what is considered to be an unhealthy diet yet still have good quality, longevity. Brocolli is now considered to be bad for you in one journal I read recently. Markets are dictating lifestyles and the gullible are falling for it.

Scientific and medical opinion may change a little every year but it doesn’t suddenly change drastically. You should stop thinking that every single article in a journal necessitates you changing how you live your life. So what if one article in one journal says that broccoli is bad for you? The overwhelming consensus is still that it is a ‘healthy’ food.

If you think that for any given person healthy diet = long life and unhealthy diet/smoking = short life then you don’t have a clue about the science behind it. So what if someone’s grandma, who smoked all her life, lived to 103? For everyone one of those grandmas there are a dozen others who died a painful death of lung cancer before getting their first pension cheque. It’s all a question of risk and probability. Eating a deep-fried mars bar won’t kill me, but if I eat one or two every day it may significantly increase my chance of dying an early death.

Scientific journals will only publish papers that have gone through a checking procedure, they must follow conventions. At the end of the research stage, practice is usually to discard all ‘anomalous results’. So participants with a very different result/response are not included in the data, and at an earlier stage many more potential subjects would be excluded because they don’t fit the demographic (usually looking for healthy normal-sized ablebodied white males).

If you compare it to modelling, perhaps 99% of models are picked for their good looks and ‘perfection’ (the other 1% being the niche market of ‘Ugly’ agency and a few others). ‘Normal’ people are expected to wear cheaper, mass-produced versions of the clothes used on the models. Most of us look nowhere near the standards required of the models, we come in all shapes and sizes, faces, colours, abilities, etc. If we were to apply to a regular modelling agency, we’d be lucky to get a part time job cleaning the toilets. And as soon as an existing model gets too old, is ill or gets disfigured, then they can kiss their job goodbye too.
So the test subjects, or the models, that ‘make it’, are actually THEMSELVES the anomaly, the deviation from the norm.

In a health study, usually the people in it have already been screened for inclusion and are not ‘normal’. ‘Normal’ people have more than one relevant health condition or factor, so including them messes up data, apparently. (Confounding variables) Even though to include them would produce a more realistic/useful picture. A drug for example could have one effect in trials on a healthy young male, but when actually prescribed to a frail elderly female it could have a very different effect.

From today’s ‘Metro’ ‘newspaper’. Article headed ‘Poor? Not when they can afford big TVs, says Jamie’. Read this & thought, thanks for that helpful insight Jamie (& other less savoury, more bitter-tasting thoughts).

Eating on little money isn’t the only point he’s trying to make. He’s mixed in a good few dollops of judgemental snobbery to his ‘helpful comments’ and given all a good stir before overcooking them in a hot oven (the public sphere). Apart from insisting it’s easy to eat well on a shoestring (sort of) truer in some instances in some parts of the world, relative to here but like comparing apples with oranges, really.

The item repeats the point about him saying he finds it hard to talk about modern-day poverty (in this country – how convenient) and reports that “Oliver, worth about £150 million, also says poor people in other countries [is this somewhat of a sweeping generalisation?] have a better grasp of food and then quotes him directly, “I’m not judgemental but … ” (!) “You might remember the scene in Ministry Of Food [sorry, no I was ordering a takeaway] [his television show], with the mum and kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers” … “and behind them is a massive f***ing TV. It just didn’t weigh up.” My blood reached boiling point when I read this. They have a large TV? And eating chips & cheese?? What has happened to this country in the 25 years since Jamie Oliver came of age and burst (drooling) onto our (smaller then) TV screens??

He also claims to know (how?) that “seven times out of ten the poorest families in this country choose the most expensive way to hydrate and feed their families; the ready meals and convenience foods.”

He’s so much more than just “a bit of an annoying prick” – if only that were the case. He’s more of a bigoted, ignorant, offensive … what you said – who ought to have stuck to the only subject he’s ever known anything at all about instead of pretending to be a travel/food writer/presenter/political commentator/sociologist/half-decent human being.

Unfortunately, someone spent (?£s) on the latest Olivier burnt offering as an xmas gift last year (at around 6 months unemployed already). It’s sat gathering dust due to a distinct lack of enthusiasm to engage with cookery books these days (at least the Jamie kind) & because the meals only -get ‘planned’ once the other essential bills have been deducted from total incomings. So there’s £x to spend one week on food items & £y the second week. The 2 amounts vary slightly but not much. They cover the basics (wine/fizzy pop/2 or 3 takeaways) & then there’s not much left to think about the component parts of a recipe: eg.

Crispy Roasted Pawns:- (feeds 4)
(a loaf of brown bread to serve); small bunch fresh curly parsley (dried not given as an option); 2xlemons; olive oil (I have this); knob butter (check); 12 raw whole king prawns (ah…); sea salt/ground pepper (check); 2 tspns English mustard; 2 tablespoons tomato ketchup (processed & full of sugar but that’s allowed for this purpose); 1 whole nutmeg for grating; 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce. (One ingredient has been omitted in case of copyright but it’s something I would use to cook with fairly often & goes with tins of tomatoes/is a bulb.
Recipe also demands foil (perhaps in kitchen on some weeks, but no longer an ‘everyday’ item. This also includes: “Make sure you’ve got a big empty bowl for shells, a few fingerbowls (sic) with warm water and lemon slices at the table and, if you’re common like me, some kitchen paper.” Ditto the foil – don’t always have kitchen paper – more to do with reasons of economic planning than a deep dislike of “fingerbowls”.

Other problems with this meal – it’s not filling enough to justify the expense. Doesn’t contain any vegetables. Won’t work if you’re vegetarian. Apart from that though …

obd, I was just a bit scared to repeat the whole recipe verbatim so left out the garlic (4 cloves, peeled – “with a garlic crusher”) in case he cames to find me and berate me for not refusing to cook it/or for copyright (?!). This bit also a bit worrying:-

“When you take the prawns out of the oven quickly stab and squeeze their heads so the delicious juices run out” (Something a bit unsavoury crept in there … ).

There seem to be some really big screens on offer. Could it be part of a ‘wider’ plan – eventually there’d be no reason to gather in cinemas – people could buy in popcorn or ice cream …. no films seen in cinemas …. no cinemas and not long after that no public theatres either? Obviously, people having problems with money shouldn’t really be thinking about going to see plays/films – it only gets them all excited and starts them thinking. Part of an (even wider) plan – pubs/online etc. …

Fresh Oysters:-
“The story of oysters is a rags-to-riches tale. In Victorian times, poor English folk would feed their whole families on these babies, known then as ‘the pigeons of the sea’ because there were so many of them and they cost next to nothing. Now, they’re on posh menus all over Britain.
From ‘Jamie’s Great Britain’

(No difficulty talking about poverty in the UK in an historical context).

sn..
yes, the poor ate salmon….as it was considered to be peasants food..and then they stopped the poor from fishing on sundays..cleared people from the lands and disenfranchised people from free food…so they could sell it back to us for a days work…

Quickly mix the water into the cement in the bucket/bin, not stopping to have a beer or bag of crisps
once ready immerse Oliver, upside down preferable, into the cement
Let the cement ‘go off’ – 3-5 mins
Remove bucket/bin containing Oliver onto the back of a van
Drive van to nearest lake
Throw Oliver bucket into lake
wash hands and go to the pub for a beer

I agree with the bit about carrying home shopping, it cripples me, I stretched a ligament in my knee whilst doing so about 2 months ago and am still in pain. Carrying home a charity food parcel took me about an hour, had to stop & rest several times. If I lose anymore weight I’ll disappear down a drain. BUT if you do know how to cook you CAN get by reasonably ok. I can make a curry for about a fiver (or less) that will feed me for a week. It probably helps if you’re vegetarian, as I am. I generally don’t eat enough fruit though, and there are weeks when I have bugger all but porridge/noodles/toast and the like. I often only eat one meal per day.

Always entertaining to see Narxist polemicists in violent agreement and engaging in Primal Therapy against the usual suspects. Jaimie’s comments about dietary habits of poor people are very similar to George Orwell’s observations in “The Road to Wigan Pier.” ???

Oliver is a real piece of work, that’s for sure. The poor don’t eat crap food for the fun of it. And are they supposed to live without a TV? For a lot of people, a TV is the only thing that gives them any pleasure in life. It’s an escape from reality in this hellish fucking country.

IDS: No you are not allowed a TV. You are meant to be spending 37 hours a day jobseeking, even when you’re asleep or on the loo. We’d prefer it if you didn’t sleep, actually. And as for junk food: why can’t you be more enterprising and learn to eat the Styrofoam container?

My Sire had to eat his way out of his coffin, then dig through 6 feet of soil. He then had nothing to eat but the jugular veins of the local peasantry. He didn’t lie about all night being dead, he got up and looked for work! He wasn’t a burden to the NHS, every time he broke a fang he went private!

Once again the voice of idiocy is taken to represent that of fact and understanding. This compassionless ‘geezer done well’ should be made to live in a deprived area on a low wage, not for a token month but for a year and see how he feels about cooking nutritious meals out of scraps after a 40 hour shift on minimum wage ! 21st Century Britain should not be remembered for people such as this Tory twit.. it is outrageous that he is even on TV,let alone put in a position of recommending how poor people should eat.

Dunno, UK people are quite good at rioting once they get around to it… Remember 1981? Though the warm weather, the fruit, and the wine are appealing. Sadly I doubt that Golden Dawn would be too pleased if we moved there.

Most TV rots the brain, I’m sure. I only watch the BBC on iPlayer, as it saves paying for a TV licence, and I don’t watch any of the commercial channels as there is too much advertising, but then to me any advertising is too much!

There seems to be a few people missing the point I think – regardless of how he portrays the message, the message itself is of good intention (whether you agree with it or not), for everyone – regardless of their ‘class’ status. Give the guy a break – so fucking what if he’s loaded? What fucking difference does that make?

nml1x..
money/access to resources seems to be a big facto, in how one views grinding poverty…he is basically claiming that lack of money/access to resources does not cause poverty..that one can have no money and live like kings and queens…and uses sweeping generalisations and cliques to express this…if money/access to resources, is not important to his lifestyle why does he want so much of it?

ps..we stress fretting about where the next meal is coming from..j o does not do this, thus he is confident in his life…it is not natural to have to fret about where the next meal is coming from, this is a modern phenomenon…think of how it feels to have access to reserves of resources, like reliable access to food etc…a full fridge, freezer, or money which is only stored energy/fat btw…

Well said overburdenddonkey, not long ago our community association was giving away tins of steak, butter etc, from food mountains they had created to keep prices high rather than flood the market with cheap food.

If you cannot see the glaring inequality in his lifestyle and that of the so called vitiriolic commentators on here, you must be walking around with your eyes closed or is it that he likes to make italians look good with his pasta dishes.

nope sorry…this is bullcrap…i never go to chip shops purely because they are too expensive and i find it much cheaper to go to a shop, buy the value pasta and sauce throw in some veg and there you go….a meal for pennies. The other day I made a big pot of soup that lasted me and my partner for 2 days…and it cost a grand total of 3 pounds. if you think it’s cheaper to go to the takeaway you just don’t know how to cook.

It is just cheap stodgy carbohydrates that will make you FAT. It is PROTEIN that costs money something all these “cheap” recipes seem to lack. Protein is filling and satisfies the appetite, carbohydrates especially wheat-based such as pasta stimulate the appetite leading to excess weight gain. ….

LP, (allegedly), baked beans can count as one of ‘5aday(!)’ in place of a vegetable … or so I try to remind myself. Can’t remember which helpful article/book I read this in. They might also be protein? It’s a while since I did cookery at school & learned which category they fall under … but they are a source of energy aren’t they?? ….

Yes, but I wasn’t just thinking of baked beans but beans in general, like Moth Beans that I use in curries. As a vegetarian I think of beans as my protein, just wondered if I was right. Not that everyone wants to live on beans all the time!

Just had a look & yes, you’re right – of course they’re a source of protein. Chick peas have the most (my favourite as it goes – never thought of them as a bean …til now), then kidney/red beans (are okay if you like that sort of thing, but sometimes their skins don’t taste great to me – they go in a curry with cabbage/coconut milk though – think it might be an African dish). Baked/haricot beans are (apparently) third protein-wise.

Beans alone won’t provide your full compliment of amino acids (the ‘building blocks’ of proteins) unlike dairy products but beans on (wholemeal) toast do. Also trying to live on beans alone is not feasible. You you need 5.3 cans of 420g baked beans to acquire 2000 calories which would also give over 90 grams of fibre! and over 90 grams of protein which would be excessive for most people. 5.3 cans of beans also give over 13g of salt! – over twice the recommend maximum of 6g a day and over 300g of carbohydrates (of which 120g are sugars), again excessive and will have you diabetic in short order. Beans are fine as part of a balanced diet but wom/an cannot survive on beans alone! You will destroy your health!

Also what (Dr) Gillian McKeek is saying about excess carbohydrates leading to obesity is true. When we think of fat we think of chip-fan fat, but this is not the sort of fat which our bodies store. In fact, if it was chip-pan it wouldn’t be so bad because it would just be excess weight that you would be carrying – but but not so bad! What our bodies stores in in fact a biologically active flux of triglyceride and fatty acids; it is through a complex mechanism that the carbohydrates we ingest are converted to these ‘fats’, they are dangerous and injurious to our health because they cause toxic substances to pass through our bloodstream. The very worse form of ‘fat’ is ‘gut fat’.

nutirtion expert..
but it is NOT insulin resistance..but useless insulin/ineffective insulin and the wt gain is caused, coz food cannot go where it is supposed to go and is mopped up by the excess insulin and turned into fats as a mechanism to keep bg’s as low as possible, or one has ketoacidosis in search of other forms of laid down energy ie from liver/fats/muscles/or tissue and can die from it’s affects…insulin resistance is a myth that goes with the notion of producing more insulin ie by exercise, to facilitate energy getting into cells, the reality is that cell insulin receptors are damaged..
a careful eye on diet + slow foods is the only way..one is limited by the level of damage to insulin receptors one suffers and this varies from person to person, with natural buffer parameters around bg levels..people with d2 have much more insulin than they need, pro rata their ability to absorb energy into cells to give muscles their energy for movement the extra bg as said then turns into visceral fats, in belly fats which is why d2 causes suffering low energy and amputations of limbs..

ps nutirtion expert…
the craving for high energy foods is a symptom of diabetes2 symptom…d2 is not even a disease it is a symptom of one..ie damaged insulin receptors cause by a lack of nutrition, likely lack of efa’s in diet..possibly 4million people in the uk suffer it, of those some know some don’t.

yeah i’m not even going to bother continuing this argument because it’s pointless. you believe what you want and whatever. but as other people said….if you don’t like the guy…just don’t read about him or watch his shows….it’s that simple

I read over the weekend that Edinburgh Council will only pay the Discretionary Housing Fund to claimants who cannot pay their bedroom tax if they give up their flat-screen TV, Sky sub, cigarettes and booze. Fucking Arseholes.

I don’t have a fridge so everything I buy has to be consumed quickly unles it’s in a can. Buying large amounts of frozen foods wouldn’t be possible besides the cost. Olivers idea that we can all get hold of herbs and fresh food at low prices should look at the cost in supermarkets. A piece of broccolli is almost a pound by itself. A kilo of onions is getting close to a pound as well. You have to buy what you can afford and make sure you have at least one meal a day.
By the way Jamie Oliver, I have a 21inch television bought in Argos in 2004 and works fine and I hope it lasts me for many years to come.

Jamie oliver came to visit my mum. My mum makes cheese. She lives on her own keeping a herd of goats. The cheese is her own recipe, invented to fit round a schedule of getting me and my brother to school. I am very proud of what my mum has done from scratch. she works hard.

Jamie oliver came to learn how to make cheese with my mum. She welcomed him, taught him what she knew and was proud to help increase the awareness of british cheese. She was told that he was making a programme to promote british cheese.

In fact, he took her life project, he added saffron and decorations to turn it in to an essex vajazzle, claiming he had made an “essex cheese”. It went out on national television and my mum was humiliated. Bought to tears, he had taken her creation and ridiculed it. FUCK OFF JAMIE OLIVER

no wayyy! I saw this programme. I thought he did something dodgy with the cheese at the end, as I recall. And that it was kind of the opposite of what it should have been. I remember thinking, ‘if that was me I’d be pissed off..’
Sorry about your mum.

wow – rightly started a storm here! absolutely agree. total inane shite from this dickhead tv personality. created by the very moronic shitefest he slags people off for watching on their mythical flat screen tv’s.
maybe these kinds of blinkered arses spout this drivel because they can’t actually face the reality of so many of us. it fills them with so much terror and self hatred they have to disappear into some kind of olive oil denial? it’s how humans cope with things that are so unthinkable and horrific they can’t possibly be faced.
the same things we live with on a daily basis.

Well said paul8ar. I remember the 1980s when the same sort of tossers were were also going on about TV s,saying that to merely have a colour one was too extravagant for someone who is supposedly poor. It became aa

Some of those scrounging scum even have running water! Mind you, if they didn’t, we’d just get even louder in calling them dirty unwashed pikey scum, or arresting them for washing in rivers or at public toilets. Or taking their ‘neglected’ kids away (despite the fact that ALL normal kids will get dirty at SOME point!).

Some of those homeless beggars have cardboard boxes! That’s far too affluent! We’ll take them away, to teach the homeless a lesson.

Some of those bolshy wageslaves say they want the right to join a UNION!!!!!! (gasps of horror)
What do you mean, you don’t want to work for £2.75 an hour on a zero hour contract? Are you the spawn of Trotsky?

You won’t believe this. Just had a knock at the door, it was the fucking TV Licensing ! Told him it was inconvenient. I’ll have to chuck my telly away now. Not that I hardly ever watch it, but at odd times I have friends round such as at Christmas time. Bugger. Oh well. And I can’t take it to the local tip ‘cos you have to have a permit, and it’s way too heavy to carry (very old tv) so I’ll just have to dump it in the street later on.

Lidl do an offer where you can get 5 different fresh vegetables for a pound. That’s enough to make stir fries for 2 or 3 days. It’s also just as quick and easy to cook. How many chicken nuggets does that buy? Not many I presume.

What a poisonous unkind right up on Jamie, hes a really nice guy, ive met alot more poisonous people in life than him. He’s totally passionate about what he does thats whats made him over paid. Everyone should have a passion, and the only spiteful person here is the one who is ripping Jamie apart for having one. XxxPEACExxx P.s i would also like to add that if you do have a passion make it meaningful… Not spiteful

I think you have gone a little too far. I’m sorry to say but Jamie is right. Technology has become more important than health for most people. I’m fairly poor, but I eat a lot of fresh fruits and veg, and I shop at Aldi. I also eat cheap wholesome foods like beans of various types. I add them to salad. Convenience foods are full of sugar and salt. The only downside to fresh fruits and vegetables is the weight. They are super heavy and I walk everywhere, so it turns into a good workout when I get a good shop. A tin of kidney beans at Aldi is only about 22 pence, which will feed me for two meals. I know the geezer is rich and probably has NO FUCKING IDEA about how we the British people are being pushed into poverty, but he is one of the chefs who is trying, and he is knows that he will be attacked for what he says. Truth being is that technology has become more important than health. Why? Because who the fuck would want to exist in such a horrible corrupt world? There is incredible sadness, but we have to stay strong in whatever way we can, even if we are eating poorly nutritious bananas or apples.

If Jamie Oliver wants to educate the masses let him do it for free on a community channel, it would save the BBC some money and we might get to watch something worth watching, every other programme is a cookery programme for goodness sake.

Technology has become more important than health? Bollocks. I’ve had to cancel my phone and internet in order to pay Bedroom Tax. I am now using my neighbour’s internet. My computer is ancient, and worthless. I don’t own a vehicle and have to walk (limp) everywhere. Can’t even afford buses. I’m lucky if I even have any electricity.

richard
j o’s article is very fuzzy, foggy, confused, unrealistic and generalised,, which is why it is being criticized on this blog..people get fed up with the day to day realities of poverty and being told it is their doing..

To the person who said disability does not limit you. And you still have choices and options. Let me inform you as politely as possible that you are 100% WRONG. How do I know? Because I wasn’t disabled and now am. In many areas of life disability can and will remove ALL choices and options. Only a person lacking any empathy or basic understanding could fail to work this out. Re the specific subject of cooking and shopping. I could and did meal plan and made nutritious meals as cheaply as possible. Now with a reduced to the bone budget, lack of ability to concentrate or think for any length of time, inability to stand/sit to prep/cook, no transport and disability means unable to use public transport, no supermarket nearby, no family to do it for me as you state everyone has..sorry wrong again. My disability has stopped me walking, standing safely, affects all ability to think and concentrate and i live with chronic off the scale pain. Good job i am not even interested or well enough to want to eat most of the time isn’t it. But what of my child? For yes i am also a single parent. What of my childs health? We have been assessed as needing care and support- but we dont receive any- cutbacks. So what do you suggest that i have missed? And no i dont own a flat screen tv either. If i did would it make everything alright?

I know a much bigger prick. Mary Berry. The evil middle-class witch who lords it over a gaggle of nonced-up middle-class mumblers baking middle-class POSH CAKES on the TELLY, which is watched by poor people who have been BRAINWASHED by greedy hypnotists like Jamie Oliver into believing that cakes are full of calories and shouldn’t be consumed by children, and certainly shouldn’t feed a family of four IN LIEU of soaked brown lentils and fresh PARSLEY.

We are watching a programme on Channel 4 about telephone sex workers – you know those vacancies that the JCP have been mandating their “customers” to apply for – and the strange thing is that all of workers keep coming out with comments such as “at least I’m not on benefits, I don’t have to go to the jobccentre every fortnight to sign on”. Also, they are making it out to be such an easy, fun and enjoyable way to make a shedload of money. The ladies all seem so shiny-happy! One of the ladies can afford to rent at luxury flat at £600 per month! Is it just us or are Channel 4 in bed with IDS, the DWP, JCP and the whole anti-Welfare State bang shoot.

I thought the 2 younger women on that programme were students and so can’t usually claim benefits anyway?? Plus I really don’t see how being a phone sex worker is any worse than those other soul-destroying jobs that don’t usually involve sex. It makes more sense for some women than working on the check-out in Tesco. At least it pays better and you can do it from home.

Much of the time I somehow manage to just scrape by, and I am a fairly good cook, BUT I’m sat here waiting for my Dole on Friday and have just calculated that after I’ve paid out all I owe this week I’ll be left with just £9.50 for a fortnight’s shopping, including food, toiletries, cleaning products, and cat food for my moggy. Can Jamie Oliver please tell me how that’s possible? And if anyone suggests eating my cat I will personally track your IP and cut your fucking throat.

I have to say that the emotional perception the intellectual precision and the creative exposition in this article is close on high Art. And I’m not being fucking sarcastic! I really mean it. I enjoyed it and learnt something as well as finding it supportive. Thank you – keep up the good work.

Oh dear – I then went and read the article in the Guardian and I am shocked at the extremity of his bizarre attitude. I now think this article is a bit easy going on him. I am shocked. I am stunned. I am bewildered. Shit I had no idea how bad it was. I think I’m going mad. FUCK he’s ill – He’s psychologically ILL.

Friends of mine have recently been eating nettles. Seriously. And over the next fortnight I may be joining them. I’m also planning to look in the local woods for some edible mushrooms and blackberries.

People who have never been there think poverty is just about money. It’s not, it grinds you down constantly having to worry about things breaking or the next set of bills coming in and juggling harassing creditors. It’s not a case of just budget and you’ll be fine, it’s budget or else, anything unexpected and you’re fucked.

it’s about restriction of choice as well as a lack of security – increasing feelings of being trapped/options closing down and dwindling resources; fear of the future. Guilt about what you’re not doing that perhaps other ‘fully paid-up members of society’ are able to – and yet knowing that you are also a fully paid-up member – it’s a bit like having been excommunicated, or can feel that way.

I did just that a couple of weeks back, didn’t find a chicken carcass though, but I did find some old unopened tinned food which I ate. The flat next door had been vacated and cleaned out so I went through the bin.

I’m from a traditionally middle class background, have a degree from a ‘good’ university and still live on less than £500 pcm. Out of which comes rent, bills etc. so I know full well how hard it is to eat on an extremely tight budget. If I spend £20 a week on food it’s only because I’m feeling flush that month. Whilst I try to eat healthily and cook properly from scratch it’s not always possible. I often come home from work at 3am when the last thing I want to do is cook and therefore something frozen with chips is the preferable option. If I buy fresh veg it generally comes in huge bags which I can’t finish before it starts to go mouldy. I’ve tried freezing veg but not everything is suitable. Eg., you can’t freeze potatoes for later in the month-they go grey and odd looking. Jamie Oliver has no idea how real people live, if he were to try to walk a mile in our shoes he wouldn’t manage six feet.

Ah Jami Oliver….. poisonous little runt you say….. Funny cause as far I remember I don’t think he is the blame for the state of the country and what choices this gives people to eat. Don’t watch it cause there is plenty of other garbage keep us occupied or maybe just maybe programs like this no matter how crappy might just high light the state of the country because the pro government news programs ain’t help are they. We can scream all we want but at this stage who listening!!!!

I’ll tell you whose listening, those that have benefitted from this crap government ‘s gift to millionaires and their mates who are probably paid to come on bloggs like this to discredit us that have the cheek to defend ourselves against blatant extortionists like tory voters.

Fuck off to Africa then if it’s such a bloody paradise, this is supposedly a first world country, there should be more than enough money for all to live comfortably. And opportunties, what opportunties? Are you totally blinkered? Fed up of being polite & reasoned to twats such as you. There’s no fucking jobs out there you idiot!

OK OK Nuggy – probably 2000 years, all the UK (namely England) ever had is what they stole from the rest of the world over the centuries through invasion, conquest leading to colonization. Just a barbaric lot – bit like Spain too in South America and look what happened to the poor North American Indians but the rich and bullshit elite everywhere are still doing it albeit with legal documentation. It is no wonder revolutions (bloodless preferred) occur over history.

That’s true if you have a rich daddy or can get financial backing for any business plans your may have without being ripped off, or have your ideas stolen from the banks who refuse to loan you the money for your venture.

Jamie Oliver wants to go and put his own house in order before jumping on the tory/lib bandwagon of persecuting the poor.How come one of his ‘top’ restaurants has been given a rating on ONE on health and safety issues ?
Focus on your own shite Jamie, and leave your judgemental attitude to cleaning up your own filthy restaurants!!!!

Some of the vitriol against the poor on here is breathtaking – it either comes from ignorance or fear, can’t fathom which.Yeah, we can all eat cheap pasta but why should we, while MPs who’ve brought all this austerity upon us are wineing & dining for free in their subsidised restaurants & bars in Westminster on top of their £400 a month food allowance!
Just to add, first thing I saw when I turned on the telly (shock, horror, benefit claimiant has telly, £10 from ebay) was an ad for some payday loan company stating they’ll loan to anyone even claimants,

You can buy a brand new 32′ flat screen tv for £180. (Argos) Which might seem like a lot of money, but when you consider how long a TV will last (over 5 years at least), on a per week basis its 0.69p per week. – Less than a loaf of bread. Multi-Millionaire Jamie Oliver is an idiot. Yes, there are worst off people in the world than the British poor, but the British poor have expectations, the government still expects us to pay tax, and NI on any income we have (over a certain level), and we still pay Poll Tax, and VAT and other forms of tax. If the government had any heart, or clue about making this country better, it would stop the blanket taxes – VAT has always been cruel tax because it doesn’t care about how much you earn.

Exactly. My TV is donkey’s years old. I paid twenty quid for it about 6 years ago and it was old then. And there’s no way I can afford a TV Licence, so it’s now getting chucked out even though it still works fine.

A licence is not required to OWN a TV. It is only if you watch shows as they’re being broadcast. Keep the TV or don’t as you see fit, but don’t think you have to dispose of it just because you don’t have a licence.

But TVL want you to think that 😉 TVL want you to think you need a fucking licence to own a mobile phone, TVL want you to think you need a licence for a fucking kettle or any other “device” which might just “pick up a TV programme as it is being shown”. You DO NOT require a licence to watch DVDs on your TV, You DO NOT require a licence to play movies off a USB stick on your TV, You DO NOT require a licence to play video games on your TV, You DO NOT require a licence to use your TV as a computer monitor, You DO NOT require a licence to OWN a TV!

Working in schools you see that there is a point to be made, Jamie Oliver just made the wrong one. Actually he shouldn’t be moaning about how these people spend their money on lavish goods they shouldn’t be able to have, but actually about pure laziness. There are many families in very similar situations in terms of where they live, benefits, education received. Yet, one family will turn up in pyjamas daily, children in dirty clothes, xbox as the daily entertainment for children, don’t get read to or listened to while reading and eat pure crap for tea. Another family will look pristine, the children go to a different private sports or activity club a few nights a week, always read to and listened to read and learnt spellings, and talk about how they tried some lovely home cooked dish etc or had a take away or pizza or whatever as a treat. Same number of parents. Same benefit and housing situation, same amount of kids, same problems, YET different outlook to life and how to bring out children. In this situation it genuinely boils down to laziness. I’m sorry but that’s what it is. He talks about people with disabilities etc, that’s a different argument. I see people, and I think this is who Jamie was talking about, who just can’t be arsed at all parts of bringing up their kids, and diet is just one facet of that.

Why do you think posh restaurants do a roaring trade, because the rich don’t cook, they also have nannies to dress their kids in a pristine fashion which they can also afford along with washing machines, most poor people struggle to replace if broken, they also have cars to get their kids to school not have to find busfares for themselves and kids. Start judging the rich twats not the poor Bobby no eyes.

Well Guido, I only judge what I see as people bringing up their kids poorly. Those that leave their children with nanny’s and spend no time with their kid’s and have children with engagement issues also piss me off. Only responding on the topic addressed. Poor parenting riles me, no matter what the background.

“Spiteful interview in the Guardian” That shows he never actually read the article. It was in the Radio Times. What a moron.
“If this week’s comments, first published in the Radio Times, are anything to go by, then it looks set to be yet another Channel 4 poor-bashing diatribe ”
Oh, so you’ve not watched it you’re just guessing what it might be like from a RT comment section. Moron
“If Oliver had actually set foot anywhere but Waitrose (except to get paid)” When has Jamie Oliver ever worked for Waitrose? Moron.

I totally agree with the premise that some people, generally the lower educated, lower motivated end of the spectrum could feed their families better for the same income. However we are not an autocracy so have no more right to insist the poor spend their income on friuit and veg than demand the well off forego their foreign holidays and give that money to charity

I think there’s definitely some truth in the fact that people spend more money on crap food because they don’t know how to cook or assume cooking will be too much effort. I’m not the biggest fan of Jamie Oliver, he irritates the fuck out of me, but the basic premise isn’t such a bad one – neither was his attack on school meals.

Dinners at my daughters school are virtually inedible – she’s actually brought home examples of the sandwiches they serve, they are truly revolting, weird salty cheese & strange grey-tinted mayonnaise. She claims that the hot meals are even worse as nothing has any added salt & they are not allowed condiments of any type. And the school claims that their dinners are healthy!

The dinners may well be healthy, but I agree the meals have to taste good first otherwise there’s no use trying to get the kids to eat them. I can’t believe the “no condiments” rule – how can anyone be expected to eat fish and chips without a good shake of salt and a splash of vinegar (providing they’re served fish and chips of course!)

Oliver’s now complaining about his British-born staff “whingeing” over having to work a 48-hour week in his restaurants. They “would close tomorrow” if it weren’t for his immigrant workers who are “much tougher” he opined.

Looks like little Jamie’s well on the road to becoming a grasping Gradgrind boss only interested in maximising his already grotesque wealth at his employees’ expense. And there are still those who think this self-obsessed charlatan’s some kind of working-class hero for smugly lecturing us on what we should be ingesting. Laughable.

I know someone who work in one of his restaurants… I thought he and his partner had split up and moved out the way he talked about never getting to see his little boy. Turns out he just has to work very long hours.

Dude. You complete fucking moron! What do you know about the show apart from what you have read? That’s right, fuck all!

Why don’t you reserve your fucking armchair Judgement until you watch what it has to offer?! If your response reads ‘I’m not gonna watch it’, how about you bury your head in shit that suits you and stop moaning about items you know fuck all about?!

Do us all a favour yeah? You’re one of the reasons the Internet has given complete cunts a voice…

Believe me DoleScum you will have a heart attack and You Will Not Survive. I could tell you more but you have no idea whatsoever. I thought I was supremely fit 19 years ago at age 41, as fit as any member of British military forces but in extreme sporting activity my achilles tendon ruptured. I need say little more except at initial stage the hospital failed me. Like I say “You Will Not Survive”, many just drop dead on first attack.

I’m neither, Cameron and his mugs are lizards in skin suits, Milliband is a fucking retard, UKIP are racist scum and the rest are imbeciles who couldn’t run the country if they tried. I don’t vote because I don’t believe in voting for someone just because they’re the best of a bad bunch. They are all fucking idiots. You’re just another cunt who thinks he’s an activist and thinks he’s an authority on every topic, when in reality you’re just a fucking clown. I’ve read your comments throughout this entire thread and you are a grade A fucking spastic.

FGS dolescum change the record, can you really stoop any lower with your expletives and the use of the word spastic and retard to insult people you disagree with, I wonder what category that puts you in, perhaps other contributors to this blogg can help me out on what your moniker should be because dolescum is too good for you.

As you claim you don’t vote, then you’re hardly in a postion to complain about & I quote “Cameron & his mugs” are you? It’s thanks to those who don’t vote that we’re run by this unelected Condem excuse that dares to call itself a government,

In fact I cannot wipe the grin on me away, you are seriously funny and just don’t get it do you. How old are you? – I tell you I think I will be here much longer than you. You obviously have little medical knowledge and don’t realise the lengths the nhs go to to keep ill people alive mainly for research purposes I suspect. Incidentally, I have never been “physically” aware of a heart attack (very uncommon) most know they are dying – do take care of yourself now! Mind, even the fittest have a heart, a fit heart, and drop dead – work it out. Most recent in news being English premier league footballer Fabrice Muamba he was extremely fortunate with high profile.

I know from watching his shows that his 15 minute meals do not include the prep time for the ingredients use microwave rice and also do not include the time taken to clean up. It also helps to have all the kitchen gadgets he has to hand.

Total crap….I’m unemployed at the moment and manage to eat pretty healthily for around £15 a week. I’m not Jamie Oliver’s biggest fan, but his bringing-out a show with recipes that are cheap to make doesn’t mean he shouldn’t keep a successful chain of restaurants or charge what he wants for his line of groceries, would you rather see him making shows only with recipes that cost a fortune to make? What a narrow-minded way to view a career!

Also, if you think a bucket of fried chicken is an economical way to feed a family you’re a moron – you could feed 5 with spaghetti bolognese for under a fiver, easily. There’s no way gas and electric would drag the cost of that up to a bucket of fried god-knows-what. Do you have no problem with the proliferation of fast-food/takeaway restaurants in poor areas? Is that any less opportunistic than what Jamie Oliver is doing with his show?

Isolating groups such as the disabled or the elderly and complaining that his recipes aren’t practical for them seems a pedantic and small point to make – most people between 16 and 65 that are below what we call the poverty line (the minimum income required to live comfortably) for Britain are unemployed but fit for work. Now considering I only have to do FOUR THINGS A WEEK to receive JSA (and I’m talking practically nothing, I could do it in 10mins on a PC at the library, or by asking for a job at the corner shop), is struggling to a supermarket too much to ask to feed yourself properly? Added to which, this show works on the assumption that if you’re watching….you can afford a TV. Duh.

A final and obvious point….if you can’t stand it, don’t watch it! You could be spending your time critiquing some of the other tripe that Channel 4 put-on. Jamie Oliver’s not out to provide a public service, he’s a businessman. If your problem with that is an anti-capitalist one and you’re quite seriously suggesting that a violent revolution is the only solution, did you see the riots last year? Did you walk around Tottenham when it was happening? I don’t know what ideological rubbish people have in their heads about what a violent revolution be like, but the reality is that, in my experience, the people who seem all for it tend to look like the kind of people that would be first to die.

sam..
jv did not advocate a bucket of chicken, but compared this to the price of one of his ready meals..food was invented 1000’s of years ago to slake hunger, a neat solution dyt? the problem is access to resources..re-read the post and links to it…

Violent revolution “in my experience the people who seem all for it tend to look like the kind of people that would be the first to die”.
“A man who hasn’t discovered something fit to die for isn’t fit to live”, Martin Luther King Jnr on his freedom march on washington DC 1963.

I found the blog and your comments hilarious, thanks. Doing the grotesque, scare-the-rich with sentiments of cannibalism and all that crap is not new. It’s not scary anymore. It was done during the FR, it was written about by Jonathan Swift, it does nothing.

The blog itself and the comments generally seem to totally neglect the middle classes, who historically have driven nearly every ‘violent revolution’ including the Peasants Revolt.

Can I also ask, if you call yourself an anarchist, what you’re doing writing blogfodder at 3.30 on a Wednesday afternoon? How exactly do you live as an anarchist in 21st Century England? Hey, sounds like there’s a TV show in that.

sam..
do you know the legend of swaney bean…see also “how to over throw the illu………” a couple of pages back…tells the truth of the peasants revolt who were sick and tired of the whining middle classes…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21506077

Oh dear God read a few different sources, I’m talking about the modern middle classes, which during the peasants revolt would have been equivalent to skilled workers, and post-industrial revolution the skilled professionals, not the landed gentry or the the bourgeois aspiring upper middle classes.

Any modern history journal will have an article about the misnomer of the ‘peasants revolt’. From which class background do you think the majority of the Occupy supporters came and from which did those who took part in the Tottenham riots come?

Can I ask, out of interest, what an anarchist’s idea is for when your much-anticipated state of nature arrives? A state of nature wouldn’t last forever, the power would simply shift to those who have the resources to defend themselves, maintain possession of said resources and strive for a monopoly of them thereafter

sam…
a cry from some kids in hackney “why does this govt hate us”..not middle class..the paradigm is actually personal empowerment…a long way off, but i focus on this, as a worthy goal…war never cures war, as you rightly say…i believe collectively we need to wake up and shift back to a more natural habitat..and discover the curable causes of the type of dominate behaviour you describe, i say curable meaning dominance is a disease, and in no way true human nature..

The thing is, he may be ‘only’ a self-aggrandising chef but he’s fast becom/ing another expert at undermining some of the poorest in society & trying to ‘show us all how to live “properly”‘. This is as much about ‘help and support’ as what JCP and government ‘schemes’ offer & we’ve more than enough on our plates without it (except we haven’t!). JO is now fairly ubiquitous (ready meals/cookware/books/tv programmes) and can express disingenuous (and ignorant) horror as to why people live the way they do (in his narrow world view) while trying to get by His large fanbase will think he’s speaking ‘the truth’ – as they have seen him go on a crusade about school meals & he’s a cook – he must know what he’s talking about. People are liable to feel offended, meanwhile, when being branded/stereotyped as ‘feckless’ – and worse – whether the person labelling them is a politician or a ‘celeb’.

I meant more generally than just the 2 on here – the people who must have kept him popular & buy each new book/watch each new TV show his name/face appears on … then share the hints & tips etc. on places like (mumsnet?). I’m going to confess at this point to being a long-time Nigel Slater fan & just get it out in the open/over with.

Probably because Oliver’s views form part of the ongoing assault by the Politicians and Media on all sides as part of a continuous effort to demonize and marginalize the poor who must be used as a scapegoat for all society’s ills. By saying that he (Oliver) has a problem with poverty in modern UK the inference is that no one is really poor, that poverty doesn’t exist, and if it does it must be your own fault. Oliver saying “I’m not being judgmental but…” is like someone saying “I’m not being racist but…”.

LP, that’s exactly how, “I’m not judgemental, but .. ” comment reads. And your point about ‘having difficulty with the idea of poverty in modern UK’ as well – it’s just a thinly veiled/more polite way of saying “I don’t believe it’s real” or “It’s only a problem because people have chosen their life to be that way …” Both made me feel really angry when I read them, & JO is not someone I’ve spent too much time thinking about before yesterday – other than the usual ‘he seems to be everywhere, with fingers dipping into lots of different pies .. ‘.

•In April 2013, M&S, Sainsbury’s, the Co-op, and Tesco decided to allow genetically modified (GM) animal feed into their supply chains, What are your veiws on GMOS jamie since you advertise for sainsburys? mybe you should read the following link. ://www.whale.to/b/gm_foods.html

Jamie Olivers comments regarding migrant workers being harder working than the British doesn’t say much for Jamie Oliver who is British unless he is calling himself lazy. When people go abroad to work they have to work harder or they would be the first to get the chop. When British workers go abroad I bet they are harder workers than the locals as they want to make a new start in a foreign land. The average british worker is no better or worse than a worker from anywhere else in the world.
If Jamie Oliver is saying that the poor eat badly then going by the way he looks Jamie Oliver must be eating crap.

This article is bankrupt of any legitimate facts and objective analysis, so it should be treated as such. Also, most of the comments are a heady, toxic cocktail of ignorance and lamentations from self-appointed beacons of the working class and people with disabilities (the latter of which has spawned many a moot point as disabilities transcend the class system anyway!) The only true facts are these: convenience foods yield some of the most inflated overheads when compared to most other items of food in shops and supermarkets. Further to this, prepared food (i.e. anything bought as ready-cooked) is subject to 20% VAT. Subjectively, it isn’t difficult to source and purchase cheap ingredients and cook a delicious and nutrition-packed meal. I believe this is in part due to a lack of culinary skills, making convenience foods the lesser course of resistance; and a lack of motivation to learn and execute. Although prevalent in working classes, this too transcends class. I know a handful of middle-class folks who eat poorly regardless of their backgrounds and income. The situation is complex and there isn’t an easy answer, but I suppose the bottom-line is this: it looks like Jamie Oliver is at least trying to put a dent in the problem; and so what if he benefits from it financially? He’s being paid to do a job! 🙂

what….
he is 200yrs to late, we do not want food tips, but reasonable access to food, we do not have it atm..savage cuts in welfare does not improve diet nor access to resources, it restricts access to them, tantalising food tips are useless…

“… and people with disabilities (the latter of which has spawned many a moot point as disabilities transcend the class system anyway!) ”

Just how is equating a rich person with disabilities ( and one presumes access to funds, outside help, transport, etc ) with a person on disabilities (and none of the above advantages) having their benefits ravaged by the recent ‘reforms’ a “moot point’?

There is no comparison. One can cope with disability due to having resources. The other cannot.

How about instead a more down to earth ‘human’ chef of some description went round the UK and visited families who are in dire need but are able to put some cheap and healthy food together. I would be much more willing to watch that programme and buy the associated cook book. A set of recipes tried and tested for the people by the people type thing.

“Has there ever been a bigger prick than Jamie fucking Oliver?” Here’s someone who’s just thrown his hat into the ring – “Lord” Hutton, former Work Secretary under Blair (aka the warmonger) says the benefits system is “fuelling the workshy”.

This appears to be an obnoxious and ill-informed rant with the sole purpose of winning favor with an obnoxious and ill-informed demographic who are easily stirred into thinking they are some sort of societal underdog.

As for all of these “poor” people, I’m on minimum wage, so I must be one of them. I still find it cheaper to shop at a supermarket than buy takeaway every night. But then again I don’t go around popping out kids that my income cannot remotely afford to support.

Oliver is after all, a working man, (who by the way earned his wealth fair and square; not some aristocratic right-winger as this article would apparently have us believe). In summary I found very few of the blogger’s points valid. I don’t think Jamie Oliver is out of touch with the common man, but perhaps out of touch with the stupid man.

According to twats like Oliver people like you are on Min. Wage because of your own fault, and you are not really poor at all. As for buying a takeaway every night, you are obviously completely unaware of the fact that people such as myself can only afford a takeaway as a rare treat maybe once a year. But that’s also my own fault because I own a TV, apparently.

“According to twats like Oliver people like you are on Min. Wage because of your own fault, and you are not really poor at all.”

Really? Sources? Evidence? When has he said this? Or I suppose I should just take your word for it because you said it with such confidence.

In any case, to an extent it is my fault. I’m on min wage for many reasons; one being that I chose to leave school at 16 and therefore never qualified for a higher paying job. Then again I don’t believe the state owes me a living, it is MY responsibility alone to put food in my mouth. We are fortunate enough to live in a country that at least has a welfare system, regardless of its flaws (and I do accept it is woefully flawed), but our government literally pays people to have children – that’s incredible (and completely backwards) by comparison with many other countries where if you’re poor, you starve. That’s it. Your government is responsible for keeping you fed and comfortably housed? Explain that logic. By what merit or achievement have you earned this?

The other key factor in social mobility is attitude. I’m on minimum wage now, but I have every intention of forging a career and building a better life for myself through hard work and perseverance. I could sit around complaining about how my government doesn’t do enough to help me progress, or I could get off my arse and start helping myself. Either way that is my responsibility, just as supporting yourself is yours. I agree the government should do more to help the unemployed get a foot on the ladder but calling people twats just because they’re rich probably won’t get you very far. In any case, if the attitude you’ve displayed in this thread here is any indication of how you present yourself to potential employers, it’s no wonder you’re still unemployed.

mike c…
do your own research, the truth is out there, your legacy has been sold down the river, wake up to this before it is too late, and learn the lessons from others who have gone before you..i do hope that you have a fruitful career, but boy do you have a lot to learn, and producing evidence and proof of this will not be an important priority, coz only you will listen…warmest wishes, on the wheel of fortune…

What do you mean supporting myself is my responsibility? The State cannot negate its prime responsibility, which is to care for the well-being of its people. The State owes us a living, and don’t you ever forget it. Damned right I’ve got an attitude. Fuck potential employers.

“What do you mean supporting myself is my responsibility?…The State owes us a living, and don’t you ever forget it.”
And who pays for the state? The taxpayer; ie. working people; people like me. Essentially you’re saying it’s the taxpayer’s financial responsibility to keep you alive? And what will you be contributing to support this charitable exchange? The state already pays for healthcare and education for an increasingly overpopulated country (I’m talking about birthrates here, not just immigration). Guess what? The budget is limited, it can’t afford to pay every useless bozo just for the privilege of staying alive. For the state to offer any purpose or service to the people whatsoever, it requires the people THEMSELVES to contribute! That means YOU.

You’re a fucking idiot. This country became wealthy not only via the exploitation of Colonialism but also upon the backs of the Working Class, like many previous generations of my family, who worked hard all their miserable lives doing the most dreadful jobs, in between fighting in Wars for this land. My Benefits are bought and paid for in full.

And where did the Working Class originate? It goes right back to The Inclosures, the mass Social Engineering that created the workforce that were later displaced by the Agricultural Revolution to become the Working Class for the Industrial Revolution. The Church & Aristocracy stole all the Common Land, and that’s why we now find ourselves living in these obsolete Towns & Cities with no Industry. The Industrial Revolution is over, there is no Industry, there are no jobs, and now the State bloody well owes us a living!

Why should I grovel to some fucking business man for the so-called ‘privilege’ of working my balls off for a shit wage to make him/her rich? I’m not their bloody slave! If they want me to work they must pay me a decent wage, at least £10 per hour or I don’t even get out of bed.

“This country became wealthy not only via the exploitation of Colonialism but also upon the backs of the Working Class, like many previous generations of my family, who worked hard all their miserable lives doing the most dreadful jobs, in between fighting in Wars for this land. My Benefits are bought and paid for in full. ”
Oh. By you? No. By the previous generations of your family who apparently COULD be arsed to get out of bed for less than £10 an hour. Still, I’m sure they’d be proud of you now. After all, the whole time they were working and fighting for YOUR right to stay in bed (at the taxpayer’s expense) and moan about how horrible your life is and how it’s everybody else’s fault.

I seem to remember her spouting the same shite you do – then spending her latter years dependant on the system propped up by the very people she advocated should starve to death without supplementary benefit.

“The budget is limited, it can’t afford to pay every useless bozo just for the privilege of staying alive.”

What do you mean ‘earned his wealth fair and square’? His gains are the ill gotten proceeds of his exploitation of staff at his restaurants and as a result of his collusion with the capitalist system. No one gets rich by honest means unless it’s by winning a lottery.

As for your slur on people’s procreative habits, no one can know beforehand their future circumstances, and may well have children in good times only to fall on bad, caused, as we know, not by the poor or averagely paid workers, but by the elite, like Oliver and stinking bankers and politicians.

The fact that you seem stupid enough to work for a minimum wage and just accept it is your choice, but I think you should grow a pair and demand that you be paid a living wage.

“No one gets rich by honest means unless it’s by winning a lottery.”
I can name several of my peers who have, and some from less fortunate
backgrounds than my own. I guess we can all make ill-informed sweeping generalisations with no real basis in fact (accepted, myself included).

“The fact that you seem stupid enough to work for a minimum wage and just accept it is your choice, but I think you should grow a pair and demand that you be paid a living wage.”
Firstly, as I indicated earlier, I have no intention of staying on minimum wage. I took the first job available because I couldn’t afford to support myself on £50 a week JSA. Thanks to my hard work over the past 6 months I am a strong candidate for promotion in a growing company that just has just taken on its third major contract this year. The system is flawed, noted and agreed, but I can do a little better than poverty, and an “I don’t get out of bed for less than £10 an hour” attitude would have guaranteed me just that. Adapt or die – I chose to adapt. I’m earning my way to a living wage, because I have no other choice. Pay reviews are up in September – my manager has put me forward for a rise. I’m quietly confident.

Call me a sellout – call me a brown-nose – I have every intention of playing the system. I’m ambitious, I’m smart, and I’m hungry for a more comfortable life. I have no doubt whatsoever I can manipulate my talents and resources to achieve this. And 10 years time, when I’m living comfortably on £25-30k a year, folkls like LandlessPeasant will still be on the doll, because he was too proud to make a START at the bottom, and get his foot in the door (any door).

Seems to me in this life you either compete for wealth or you settle for stagnation and bitch about people who’ve dared to succeed (eg, Jamie Oliver). I live by the principle that it’s one thing to try and fail, but not trying is the ultimate defeatism, and therefore the worst failure of all.

mmmmmm’ “”” it’s one thing to try and fail, but not trying is the ultimate defeatism, and therefore the worst failure of all.””” makes sense, only thing is when you have tried and tried and tried multiples’ of times over the years it is quite easy to arrive at “the ultimate defeatism” stage.

Given inflationary pressures in the economy (“quantitative easing” , or “money printing” to you and me 🙂 ) in ten years time £25-30K won’t be enough to afford a sprig of basil….. with a “drizzle” of olive oil….. 🙂

I have a real problem with poverty in modern day Britain. How can people claim to be poor when they squander their over-generous Benefits on things like Bedroom Tax? It’s outrageous. I don’t pay my taxes so that people can piss about all day earning Min. Wage. The country’s gone to the dogs. Children whingeing that they”re hungry when the High Street is full of takeaways, you don’t see African children complaining, they make their own burgers out of snot. Bring back National Service I say, that’ll teach them some appreciation for the better things in life like Golf and Grouse shooting, what what. I didn’t get where I am today by not eating takeaways. It’s bloody outrageous….blah, blah, blah…

I am a teacher in hackney and was bringing in food for a child to eat as she was so hungry…she didnt get enough to eat at home, her mum had run up massive bills on her school dinners and the family had been evicted for non-payment of rent..where is she now? on holiday in america…

Many, many years ago I was a single parent on benefits. My children had a hot breakfast every day, ate plenty of fruit and veg, most nights they had fresh fish, liver or rabbit. To achieve this I lived mainly on cheap fish fingers and volunteered while they were at school so that I could get a free meal and save on my heating bills. I shopped daily until I scavenged a fridge.
This was at a time when benefits were relatively generous; I can’t imagine how I would cope if I were in that situation now. There are no local markets, the local shops can’t compete with the supermarkets on price or variety so most people can’t afford to use them for their main shopping. Where are we supposed to get our handful of mange tout and mussels? An off-peak day rider costs £4, almost the delivery cost of shopping at an online supermarket. Of course, you need the Internet to do that….
J. O. has a problem with ‘modern’ poverty because he hasn’t the slightest comprehension of ordinary people outside of peering voyeuristically at people as if they were in a zoo. People who have never experienced poverty have no right to make judgements.

lee kerr,
the benefits system now is brutal..one person told me that after “normal”, ie bed tax, extra rates, etc, service charges, his £71/wk is reduced to £28/wk..that is without any sanctions being imposed..all the little helps you describe are gone…he head is in the past, has yet to catch up with reality, and likely never will ..

A lot of the comments on this blog, and indeed the article itself use the terms ‘them’ and ‘us’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ (Them, I assume, being Jamie Oliver and his mates, the celebs, politicians, aristocracy, the rich, the well off, the middle classes and the working class people successful enough not to be poor… and ‘us’ being the down-trodden, neglected majority of the population, struggling to make ends meet on low incomes and or benefits).

What I find frustrating to read, that which annoys me more than Jamie Oliver’s fat overpaid face, and his insensitive comments in what can only be described as yet another cynically motivated campaign of do-gooding, is the mentality of those who blame ‘them’ for the fact that ‘we’ struggle to eat healthily, which is, with a few exceptions such as the disabled, Bullshit.
The biggest problem with this sort of left wing blame game is that it doesn’t even take in to account personal responsibility, the fact that I, the individual, am responsible for what my family and I eat.

I don’t believe that anyone who can afford a tv to watch Jamie Oliver on, or a computer and the internet to complain about him on, can’t afford a bike to pedal down to the shops rather than eat from the chippie round the corner. One can, as graeme braisby pointed out, (and, dare I say it, JO?) eat healthily on a shoe string. When I was skint I practically lived on risotto (the rice is cheap as chips, haha, and you can put literally anything in it. One pot to wash up)
Are fat people fat because they can’t afford a pair of trainers to go running in? The idea of social responsibility, of our democratically elected leaders being responsible for making healthier foods as convenient to obtain as the rubbish that is bad for us is nonsense.

If healthier foods were more popular, there would be more marketing for healthier foods. If more consumers stopped to think before they went to smash another maccies then there wouldn’t be a pair of golden arches in every town. If people started thinking about what they were doing more and making pro-active decisions rather than believing everything that they read and, like so many sheep, bleating about how its not fair while they idly chew the shit the farmer feeds them then fucking Jamie Oliver wouldn’t have got the funding for his shit programe in the first place.

why did he not report this negligent mother to social services, as a teacher surely he would have a duty to do this, of course it’s rubbish, but it gives us a chance to attack the middle classes whether they are judgemental ones like candlestickmaker or negligent ones who use nannies, boarding schools etc to care for their children.

@candlestickmaker
‘What I find frustrating to read, that which annoys me more than Jamie Oliver’s fat overpaid face, and his insensitive comments in what can only be described as yet another cynically motivated campaign of do-gooding, is the mentality of those who blame ‘them’ for the fact that ‘we’ struggle to eat healthily, which is, with a few exceptions such as the disabled, Bullshit.
The biggest problem with this sort of left wing blame game is that it doesn’t even take in to account personal responsibility, the fact that I, the individual, am responsible for what my family and I eat.’

Ohhh! I think this article is far more spiteful and condescending than J.Oliver’s message! It IS actually possible to eat well really cheaply. I did it myself and for my family before I trained to be a midwife and got a good job. I had barely any money on my student bursary and very little time as I was studying, doing my clinical work and had three young kids. When I said I barely had any money I really mean it! I sat down and wrote meal ingredients for the week down to the last carrot and pepper! Always cooked from scratch healthy cheaply made meals and there is no way I could have afforded ready meals. It cost just as much to buy cheap misshapen veg (as opposed to ‘posh’ uniformly shaped ones) than to buy cheap sausages and chips. I always went to the supermarkets at times when they reduced prices for food and didn’t get stuff I just couldn’t afford but we never went without either. We just didn’t care if we didn’t have the latest TV set etc. I don’t think he is trying to be spiteful or condescending, I think he is genuinely trying to help people and he is right, you can feed a family better with the same amount of money by making better choices and being prepared to cook from scratch like our grandmothers did at a time when it was not easy to go and get fried chicken and chips or put a ready meal in the microwave.

Has he ever thought that poor people have good TVs as once they have bought it, usually on credit, then there aren’t any more costs? It’s a lot cheaper than the costs of tickets, travel, and nice clothes to the theatre or equipment for hobbies.

Although Jamie’s done it in the wrong way, I love the notion that this guy can use the bedroom tax and benefit sanctions as an almost an excuse to justify poverty…

“With many people forced to live on just a few pounds a week due to benefit sanctions, the bedroom tax and other savage cuts” How about they go and get some jobs then, and stop complaining about the minute difficulties of obtaining free money.

“His ludicrous comments about the lavish diets of Sicilian street cleaners gives a taste of what to expect” The guy who wrote this is obviously too sheltered to warrant an opinion frankly. Has he ever been to Sicily? Ha! Don’t be sicily…

“No-one has mobility problems, and so can easily drag home bags of shopping, even if the plebs don’t have a car. The electricity and gas required to slow cook cheap cuts of meat never runs out. Hard pressed single parents can simply pop out to browse the artisan stalls outside the local Poundstretcher, whilst pensioners should just pick up some cherry tomatoes and fresh fucking mussels at the off licence on the way home from the Bingo.” How would the people with mobility problems be alive if they couldn’t acquire shopping whatever it was? Does Jamie’s cooking involve tanks’ worth of butane? Are single parents getting their kids to live off air? And pensioners have little else to do with their day if they’re of the ilk this dick-witted author is referring to!

“If Oliver had actually set foot anywhere but Waitrose (except to get paid) HE REPRESENTS SAINSBURYS, LAST YEAR’S CHEAPEST SUPERMARKET DICKHEAD in the last 20 years, he might have seen how ‘value food’ – cheap shit with a poor nutritional value – dominates the shopping trollies in the poorest areas. He might even notice that in areas where there are cheap take-aways, a bucket of chicken and chips will feed a small family for the price of one of his ready meals STOP CHOWING OFF ABOUT NUTRITIONAL VALUE AND THEN JUSTIFY FAT FRIED CHICKEN YOU IDIOT. Perhaps he would even have taken some responsibility for his role in promoting the supermarket dominance which has forced millions of people to buy over-priced and unhealthy food because as anyone poor knows, it is usually the cheapest option IF YOU LISTEN TO WHAT HE DOES, HE’S ENCOURAGED PEOPLE TO EAT MORE HEALTHILY USING CHEAP MEANS FOR 10 YEARS NOW. And in areas where supermarkets have closed the local shops and markets down, it is increasing the only option. AND THEY SELL MORE HEALTHY THINGS?!”

Very helpful! “Go and get some jobs” … there might be a buy one, get one free or a 2for1 offer on jobs at selected workplaces this week … It’s funny the way that unemployed people never think of trying to earn their own money until someone with a job points out this obvious ‘answer’.

If it weren’t for the “free money” (& ok, the “minute” difficulties of day-to-day survival) I don’t think I’d have ever come up with anything so ground-breaking until I read it here. It’s almost counter-intuitive!. Even when I was working my notice along with half the department/hospital, last year – it just never crossed my mind as being worth a try …. Brilliant.

Wow never knew Jamie Oliver had so many groupies (astroturfers?). Ah celebrity worship.. you’re all kind of sad. If he merely had such a kind sweet heart and so wanted people to eat better then his comments will be aimed at all in society not just the poor, last time I checked majority of the food in Waitroise and Marks and Spencers are indeed unhealthy ready meals.

Okay here’s the game of the right-wing cliché bingo:

Only the poor eat bad. Cliché no 1 tick.
TV size= wealth. Clichés.no 2 tick.
Immigrants are better than UK workers. Cliché no 3 tick.
The young British are specially lazy and feckless. Cliché no 4 tick
I’m not a ….. but… comment. Cliché no 5 tick.

Lets see, just need to wait for the children of the poor should be euthanized/sterilized type of comment. (Only the rich are allowed to breed as I doubt the “middle classes” could provide an advanced 18+ year financial plan in place either, per child. )

Others; all disabled are fraudsters, all benefit money gets spent on fags, booze and drugs (the more popular Cliché of his main moralising point ), Apple products exist therefore everything is fine in the UK (the sister cliché to the TV one that gets trotted out) and then maybe something racist and/or Africans live in hell on earth so we shouldn’t expect or try for good standards of living in the UK, for the dressing.

I guess he wants to be selected for candidacy for some shitty party in the 2015 elections.

Jamie Oliver is uninformed and should think before he opens his pie-hole. He has taken his own isolated experience of poverty, i.e. *eating cheese ‘n chips out of styro-foam while watching a large plasma TV* and wrapped it around the whole socio-economic group. This scarily echos IBS and his *skivers with their curtains still drawn at 10am* and no doubt will be seized upon by the likes of the Scum and the Daily Heil. IBS must be cuming in his pants.
He is also misinformed about the poor Italian street-cleaners making a meal from stale bread and mussels. Again, he appears to have taken his own isolated experience and applied it to all. Italy has an obesity epidemic (amongst children) far worse than the UK, with 49% of 8 year olds in the poor region of Campania found to be overweight. The people in these poorer regions have adopted a diet far removed from the idyllic cherry tomato mussel concoction he describes.

Read that the recession in Italy has caused many people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, including those with jobs; being forced to move back to live with their parents (not as carers). Because they can’t afford to buy or rent. My ex-tutor (from Terni) confirmed this is the case.

As Void already said – arguments overlooking the glaring fact ***we’re not supposed to be a Third World Country*** (or so we’re told), so why should people even have to be thinking of how they can acceptably eat on ‘pennies’? More division between the rich and the poor, between the ex-poor who think they’re smarter than other poor, and so on. Isn’t the prime fact this country is going to shit if people are eating one meal a day (not by choice) or visiting food banks at all, and there always happens to be someone in the wings ready to divert from the fact by telling you this state of affairs is YOUR fault, not the fault of failed government or economic policy? It’s NOT specifically my fault I can’t afford my food bill these days, it’s the fault of many things, including dickhead bankers and property tyrants, but somehow only the poor are to blame for their poverty in some people’s brains.

We shouldn’t be wondering how to stop our kids from going hungry because this isn’t Somalia last time I checked. But actual, REAL poverty here is creeping in to this country and few will believe it – they actually think it’s “just people moaning” or “not budgeting”. Pathetic. Blame the people charging ridiculous prices for food, or those who allow food to become so expensive so that hunger exists, or even better – blame the No. 1 reason for poverty in this country – government-approved public robbery by way of excessive rents. THAT is the main reason people are so fucking poor in this land. If they weren’t spending 50% or more of their meagre incomes on paying through the nose for the necessity of four walls – because you’re lucky if you can get a council house with a ‘normal’ rent these days – people would be able to afford to eat. But no. Overcharging for a life necessity like a roof is the national institution, probably propping this whole flaccid ramshackle erection of a country up since so many jobs have been allowed to flit overseas or are given to people who “will work harder than a Brit”, or to a young apprentice-slave. And the cream on the cake is that, few care or notice, because even the poor have been systematically wooed into hating themselves, into admiring wealth and trying to be the very aspiting-middle-class homeowners which is causing this, and rather than affect change, almost everyone thinks the way out is to become one of those with a house or two. Houses are for living in, not fucking ‘investments’ to be kept at artificial prices.

Yes you CAN eat raw food instead of a shitty LIDL pizza, but believe me, vegetables are not fucking cheap and you can’t go around a supermarket looking at the veg deals and emerge ‘better’ off at the checkout with fresh produce because it’s ridiculously expensive now. Unless you want to eat tins of beans and rice, which again, last time I checked this wasn’t a country where I was supposed to be eating a refugee diet, so why are people telling me to?

I cant believe people still try and say unhealthy food is cheaper and veg or healthy food is too expensive?

Fresh Veg, Beans, Pulses, Peas, Soya are all cheaper than unhealthy processed food no matter where you buy it, local greengrocers or tesco, morrisons, waitrose doesnt matter its still cheaper and better for you.

When you people say that veg is too expensive and you have to buy cheaper unhealthy food what do you people eat every night? pot noodle? kershaws microwave roast dinners? seriously stop being so ignorant and defensive!

Im not a vegetarian but i dont eat meat everyday either, i make a lot of vegetable stew or curry, lentil ragu or even homemade baked beans on toast with haricot and canelleni beans is healthier and costs very little to make even for a family.

Jamie Oliver is only trying to educate our ignorant country and trying to at least help with things like type 2 diabetes epidemics for our future generations!

what did he actually say about poor people and tv’s? i seen a lot of people commenting about it on here, but why would anyone suggest that when probably the most common thing to be found in a uk household is a tv?

“I’m not judgemental but I’ve spent a lot of time in poor communities and I find it quite hard to talk about modern-day poverty,” the 38 year-old said.

[Crikey he’s only 38? – it feels as if he’s been around for ever].

“You might remember that scene in Ministry of Food [his television show] with the mum and kid eating chips and cheese out of Styrofoam containers and behind them is a massive F***ing TV. It just didn’t weigh up.” (‘Metro’, August 27th 2013)*

alx10..
what ignorance you display..diabetes2 causes obesity, it is caused by too much insulin/INEFFECTIVE INSULIN, via damaged to cell insulin receptors, so that high bg is mopped up by the now useless insulin and turned into visceral fats, that lower bg, and help prevent ketoacidosis. the body uses amazing mechanisms to keep bg as low as possible, if the energy cannot go where it is supposed to go, and flow, on demand. i used to eat a good 3 meals/day and be as thin as a rake coz i burnt the food off with hard work..20+ years ago this stated to change and cause concern, and i tried every conceivable thing i could to mitigate loss of energy and weight gain.
diabetes2 causes cell hypos, and bg hypers, the other symptoms ie thirst cause one to piss out excess sugars, diet of slow foods and eating much less food, keeps bg’s at reasonable levels..there is no cure no matter what one does, one still carries the symptom that is diabetes2..one always has lower energy than a fit person will have..
many overweight people are not diabetic and never will be, excess activity and a poor lacking diet, can cause diabetes..
ie, the lacking diet can be full of fruit and veg yet still be lacking..
diabetes2 symptom, is not caused by laziness either, it causes laziness and lethargy.
coz energy cannot get into cells as nature intended..diabetes2 symptom, is said to be caused by a LACK of specific foods in our diet, EFA’s, there is much evidence that the quality of our foods, is not what it used to be..
i suffer badly from it’s symptoms including neuropathy and “claw” right hand..

This whole thing is starting to annoy me now. Yes Jamies attitude is a bit condecending and he is far removed from the reality of poverty. SO FUCKING WHAT! People can eat a lot cheaper by buying base ingredients. Not only that but in doing so they are giving their money to less unethical corporations surely something worthwhile. I myself have been doing the same thing but by staying a few nights with various mates and buying and cooking cheap, healthy food. Most of them have continued with the habit and are better of and feel healthier. My reason is fuck all to do with physical health and only partly down to more ethical spending. My primary drive is that I’m sick of apathy!! Poor diet leads to apathy, we can not achieve the type of groundswell required for social change with this much public apathy. This is not idealistic or hippy shit, a healthy diet increases energy levels and brain function massively, the people who’s diets I have actually changed are financially better off and a lot more pissed off with the state of our society. If you are genuine about social change then you would overlook Jamies condecending fuckwitterry and help spread the word of cheap, healthy eating. Thus giving the poorest in our society a slightly better financial footing in the short term and ridding many of their apathy which will increase the chance of making the kind of change necessary to give everybody a much better financial footing in the long term.

The poor cannot afford neither cheap healthy food nor unhealthy food, most are relying on food banks, so stop your bloody lecturing you so called health freaks because all that is needed is increased benefits to be able to eat at all.

I am poor and manageing to eat healthy, mainly because it is cheaper. I am on benefits and over 60% of it go’s on topping up my rent. I am certainly no health freak. Why should people starve just so they can fit into your world view??? Yes benefits are far from what they should be. Not everyone on benefits are reliant on food banks. Social change is what is needed not an increase in benefits. It’s time to start putting solutions into practice starting with the small things, and quit whining about the problems.

drhooss contradicts himself, first he says benefits are far from what they should be, then he says social change is what is need not an increase in benefits.
I haven’t got a clue what he meant when he said “why should people starve so they can fit into your world view”.

fawkes…
yes exactly…and in denial, and thinks that a neighbour should pop round with a cup of sugar, people should do more volunteering, which flies in the face of what clem atlee knew, and why the concept of dignity rather than the power broking of commercial charities, and the inevitable conditionalities, sanctions, pleasing the master, this produces…follow this or that dogma!

ps
sorry i did not answer all of your questions..“why should people starve so they can fit into your world view”. what he meant is the lowest denominator, because people have little money it does not mean that they starve or would be starving, but this was expressed in terms of %, rather than a specific amount of money, in fact the statement is unverifiable, unless one knows the actual sum of money or access to resources one might have at one’s disposal, so in those terms what he said is nonsense..

Whilst i do dislike Jamie Oliver and his completely transparent disguise as a down-to-earth everyday ‘geezer’, when he is infact a toff bellend, and was back in his twattish little flat during the Naked Chef years, I hardly think he was being spiteful in the interview, he just managed to highlight his inability to have a fucking clue about anything relevant to those he’s trying to lecture. Sorry “teach”.

What little redeeming qualities he does have (the school dinners was quite admirable, no matter what you say) do nothing to outweigh the fact that he is a condescending mouth-breathing twat who needs to wake up from his Daily Mail dreams and take a proper fucking look around the country that he seems happy to sum up in a few ill-founded sentences.

Off topic somewhat, but he also needs to clean under his fingernails. I saw a close-up of him chopping vegetables not too long ago (my wife is fond of his television programmes), and the state of his hands was grim. Clean yourself up before you prepare food Jamie, you scratty little cunt. Even the poor can wash their hands. When they’re not watching their undeserved flatscreen televisions that is.

What kind of social change?? Well for a start stop asking the government to make change on your behalf. We need to move away from centralisation towards self determination and co-operation. The idea that every poor person relies on foodbanks and that we need to grovel to the government for higher benefits. Just so folks can get on their high horse about middle class people not understanding the problems of the poor Is what I mean. Constantly reinforcing this idea that we all need to go cap in hand is increasing the levels of apathy within our society. I don’t understand why people need to eat vile chemical filled shit bought from the very people who created this shit situation we are in. Just because it is seen as some sort of working class badge of honour to eat shit pies and cheap sausages. It is cheaper to buy healthier foods from less unethical companies. We can also form local food coops as a starting base for encouraging people to reclaim some level of financial autonomy by increasing our cooperative buying power. Change starts from changing the small things we can change now. Not from riding on the backs of other peoples suffering to justify a world view of how bad everything is. Not from asking the government to give us more and not by spreading apathy.

drhooss….
the welfare state was set up to benefit all..not some but all, people from all walks of life, where ever they lived and from whatever background they came from, the change that you advocate is impossible to achieve in practice without radical reforms…ie to a socially cooperative society…this requires a complete change in housing policy and land reforms..we are being squeezed tighter and tighter to live with less and less..we are being slowly strangled of our rights and heritage…typical of what is being done is expressed in lucy reynolds vid.on the health and social care bill, extrapolate this out into general establishment policy and you will get a very good idea of what is going on in our culture atm…

“cheap takeaways”…. Strip away all the cliches about “farmers markets” & “fresh basil” and Jamie actually has a point. Takeaways aren’t actually that cheap, especially if you have to feed a family. Better off buying a chicken or mince in Tesco or Lidl , and some spuds and frozen veg. And guess what, “cook it”. More nutritious too.

liamo..
which is exactly what i do…i do not need the advice of others to eat as well as i can, needs must…try to understand what jo was saying if you read what he said carefully, yes, it is complex to analyse…thank god for jv…food has existed for yonks, apparently people ate better during the wars coz of home grown, therefore grow your own…..

I understand the reasons and principles of the welfare system and aprove, but I feel it should be in the peoples hands not the government. As for social change requiring reform… Fuck reform I beleive in taking what is rightfully ours. I have done a lot of good work the past few months. I am close to setting up a food coop. There is now a group of us out skipping and giving out the food, and we have an organised shoplifting network to provide clothes and shoes for children who’s parents are struggling. This is all involving people with no previous experience of radical politics. People off their own back are now starting to talk about securing houses against bedroom tax evictions again people with no political backgrounds. Eating together and working/acting together is the start of social change. We can take and build small things and make small changes here and now without reform. Small things lead to big things. People feel disempowered when told they have to scrounge or that they are all reliant on hand outs or that we need to ask our government to make reform. When people take what is theirs it is empowering and contagious. This all started by my returning from traveling/protesting and insisting on continuing my habit of communal eating with ordinary folks who to start thought it wierd. These people are now more radical than most self styled “anarchists” I have met during my 20 years of direct action. I used to beleive the fight was in the street now I know it means the street you live in.

He may be able to grow vegetables but he can’t grow cattle for those who choose to eat meat,or is he advocating everyone become vegetarian. I don’t believe drhooss has been an activist in any shape or form, probably a civil servant more like.

It is a generalization that poor people feed themselves or their families on garbage as so many commenters on benefits have demonstrated here, so really there is no need for nationwide cookery programmes for what could be a minority of people who probably would exercise their right to buy what they want to eat any way, or would you like such people to have their children taken away from them for not feeding them so called healthy food?

My second point is we have a farmers market each month in our town but the poor cannot afford their meat and vegetable prices which are even higher than the supermarkets, when I questioned this especially as they are cutting out the middleman, I was told because it has not been modified in any way so is therefore a touch more expensive. I’ve never heard so much bullshit in all of my life from these profiteers.

My third point to drhooss is how am I riding on the backs of other peoples suffering to justify a world view of how bad everything is? You could be on benefits as you say and be eating frugally with pots of money in the bank or one or more pensions, who knows? also I don’t need to get on my high horse about the middle classes not understanding the poor, there has been enough evidence on here to prove they don’t, at least not the poor in their own country where poverty is at present relative not abject as in the countries these verbal dogooders have been privileged enough to visit.

We do have a charity that has started up community gardens to grow vegetables and also an exchange of help via trades, talents or practical help towards one another on a barter type system, but there are still those on the fringes who either do not or cannot participate due to work or caring for sick young or elderly and would benefit more from increased benefits.

I think I have proved I am far from apathetic about anything so take your insults elsewhere.

What’s JO’s obssession with “farmers’ markets”? Is he implying that they are somehow cheap? Maybe in the days when you could go get a bag of spuds of the local farmer! Around here it is £2.50 for 6 tomatoes at the local “farmers’ market”; you can pick up the same in the supermarket for a £1. “Farmers’ markets” are a rip-off, not doubt set-up to fleece JO’s latte-drinking, middle-class, 4X4 driving wanker fan club.

peggy..
when i was a kid in the 50’s, the only place to buy decent food was at the markets, there was always a vast range of cheap stuff on sale, they were heaving..then come the supermarkets, and the markets disappeared or shrunk..plucked one’s own chickens and burnt the hairs off of pork, bartered bargained haggled pulled disgusted faces at the traders, to make them feel uncomfortable about their prices..
jo did not invent markets..they vanished coz demand slumped..meat was properly matured, food tasted better then..

It’s the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) that keeps the price of food artificially high especially fresh fruit and veg. I remember as a kid munching through boxes of pomegranates … 🙂 Who could afford to do that these days… how much does a pomegranate cost?

sue…
food is now bland and expensive…it costs a fortune to buy food like that these days…so people eat food for flavour, the feeling is if it tastes good it does you good, and that’s what’s wrong, food lost all of it’s flavour, it has gradually improved, but is not a patch on what one used to be able to buy…

“JAMIE OLIVER It’s not easy to get people to think about the money they spend on food. But they do if you say, “Guys, after your mortgage, the second largest amount of money you’re going to spend in your life is what you spend in your supermarket.” The average person is much more loyal to a supermarket than any religion or brand.”

“JAMIE The fascinating thing for me is that seven times out of ten, the poorest families in this country choose the most expensive way to hydrate and feed their families. The ready meals, the convenience foods.

MARTIN But it costs more to be poor. If you take the wider picture, you can’t have direct debit discounts, you’re on hire purchase, you’re on prepaid meters for gas and electricity, which is typically 15-20 per cent more expensive. Peversely, and disgracefully, people with less money pay more for running their home than everyone else and therefore have less disposable income.

JAMIE Yes, but I meet people who say, “You don’t understand what it’s like.” I just want to hug them and teleport them to the Sicilian street cleaner who has 25 mussels, ten cherry tomatoes, and a packet of spaghetti for 60 pence, and knocks out the most amazing pasta. You go to Italy or Spain and they eat well on not much money. We’ve missed out on that in Britain, somehow.”

———————————

A readable, for the most part, and sometimes interesting article on the programme where the ‘massive fucking TV’ is nicely framed in the background of numerous shots while Oliver displays his discomfort being in the room with someone on benefits**:

Overburdenddonkey
You started with the insults!!!
If ye can’t take it in don’t give it out!!

I never said you were apathetic i said poor diet contributes to apathy.

“The poor cannot afford neither cheap healthy food nor unhealthy food, most are relying on food banks, so stop your bloody lecturing you so called health freaks because all that is needed is increased benefits to be able to eat at all.” Your own words…. It is bullshit, yes reliance on foodbanks is at an all time high, but to try and claim all the poor do it to score points is fucking low.

Although this has been in general a lighthearted discussion regarding Jamie Olivers comments it is important to respond to his comments. Oliver does have a fan base and many will take his word for things so it’s vital to respond and spell out the reality.
It seems like the media are not bothering to report on how the benefit cuts and sanctions are affecting people and when it’s not on the news many will not even give it a second thought.
I don’t expect this so called week of protest will be given much coverage especially with the troubles in Syria and the lack of interest the media seem to have. We would get more media coverage if we were badgers.

Rob, I think this has been a very serious discussion and one that needs to be had. Completely agree, though, that now JO has ‘credibility’ (as in he did the school dinners campaign/has started a charity so his heart ‘must be in the right place) his social comment/opinions might/could be taken as read by some fans (or just let pass). He’s not as dangerous as someone like (say) IDS/George Osborne but he’s on their wavelength and has a public platform (or two) which isn’t good. Stereotyping like this should be rebutted.

Think It’s true about Syria/badgers as well (but in particular Syria, which whatever else it is, is a distraction from domestic politics/contraventions of people’s human rights here – whether by chance or by design/both).

for a start it was not overburdeddonkey that challenged your remarks but me and I stand by every word. Since when did poor diet contribute to apathy? Who is saying the poor who go to food banks only to score points are you insane? You’ve been around too much bullshit or other type, I said more poor people are using food banks because it’s the truth.
I think the only activism you have been involved in before your retirement from the civil service,was how to end the welfare system you moron. You sound very much like a welsh windbag who posts on here and insults everyone.

Perhaps jamie oliver should have done some research to find out the reality before insulting the poor in society, while trying to promote his forthcoming programme which I for one will not be watching, if only his followers watch then he is preaching to the converted and it will be a completely useless waste of air time.
By the way I eat what I like and am perfectly healthy.